Cookbook on a Budget: Saag-Style Collards from Vishwesh Bhatt
We're back, baby!
This is the third installment of Cookbook On A Budget, in which I share cookbook recipes that aren’t unkind to your grocery budget. For more, check out Via Carota’s Onion Soup and Ruby Tandoh’s Eden Rice with Black Beans and Plantains.
Welcome back, sweet MessHeads—I’ve missed you, but only for the last two weeks or so, if I’m being honest. I was very glad to take a little late-summer break, and allow my brain the space to have a single new idea about what to do in the kitchen. Late summer, to me, means fried fish sandwiches at the beach1, not ingenuity in the kitchen. It is a time to turn the brain off and dive into the sea, and this year, weirdly, it was also an unexpected time of mourning. But now that labor day is behind us, now that I’ve listened to Everclear’s “Santa Monica” on repeat for a full week, now that I really am in need of new pens and notebooks—I’m excited I’m ready to have a single new thought, even if that single new thought is just: collards!
I’m sure I hadn’t eaten a bite of collard greens before arriving in North Carolina for college, though my parents are welcome to fact check me here. (I remember my mother bravely trying to feed us broccoli rabe once. It didn’t go over well, and I can’t imagine collards would have fared any better.) Collards, for me, are inextricably linked with the six years I lived in North Carolina: first in Chapel Hill, for college, and then in Charlotte, where for a year and a half I tried and failed to be a corporate striver. I ate piles and pots of them, slouchy and meaty, next to fried chicken or vinegar-laced pulled pork in a meat-and-three meal. During my post-college vegan phase, I tried my hand at raw collard wraps, a dish I think back on fondly but have no desire to ever eat again.
When a fat bunch of collards appeared in my CSA haul last week, I was excited but stuck. I don’t have any sort of go-to collard recipe. A plain braise wouldn’t cut it. I wanted something new and exciting, something to celebrate the late-summer, early-fall season that brings us tomatoes and corn and eggplant and collards and stone fruit and peppers and low-angled sunlight. The travel is over, the cooking can begin. I sniffed through a pile of cookbooks that I still haven’t cooked from but have been meaning to cook from, including Vishwesh Bhatt’s I Am From Here, which includes a generous FIVE collard recipes. And listen, I made three of them. I went to the green market and got an armful of collard bunches, fat and regal like palm fronds, and went to my beloved local spice shop, I’ll admit I went a little wild. But, as I’ve written before, I love a book that makes me want to clear my schedule and spend an afternoon cooking, that gets me to bulk up my spice collection.
I Am From Here is a collection of recipes whose flavors, techniques, and structures pull from Bhatt’s early life in Gujarat, India and his career as a student and chef in the American South, his chosen home. One of my favorite things about the book is its celebration of traditional Southern crops: okra gets an entire chapter! As do eggplant, tomatoes, corn, rice, greens, peanuts!, catfish, and so on. (The okra chaat is next on my list.) Ingredients get pride of place; place gets pride of place. And this structure clearly allows Bhatt to play around in these ingredient-shaped sandboxes, roving from, say, peanut-crusted fish to peanut pie to boiled peanut chow-chow.
Most successful, most thrilling of the green recipes I made was the saag-style collards, a creamy tangle of spiced and braised greens. It’s a familiar format to basically anyone who has stepped into an Indian restaurant. Bhatt swaps spinach and its puny shrinkingness for sturdy, brash collards, to great effect. Their bulk holds up easily against a few glugs of cream, pushing back against richness and spice instead of being swallowed by them.
The recipe requires some time. I Am From Here falls squarely into the category of “chefs writing for home cooks”, which is almost never going to be as easygoing as, like, punching “collard greens” into the NYT Cooking search function. But it will make up for that extra effort by really teaching you something, by inviting you into Bhatt’s world. What I’m saying is, yes, you have to caramelize chopped onions, and it’s going to take you longer than the 20 minutes the recipes predicts. You’re also going to need to buy mustard seed oil and amchur2 (dried mango powder), which are easily found online or at Indian grocers. (Though I will say—forgive me chef—I tasted the collards before adding these last two ingredients, and they were still delicious.) But at the end you’ll have these saag-style collards, which are honestly kind of transcendent. And because they’re so rich, the leftovers will stretch a few days. I stuffed mine, alongside some egg and cheese, into a midday snack that was more or less a paratha quesadilla. I am offering you that photo instead of the photo of the pot of greens, because the latter looks scary under my harsh kitchen light, and these collards are not scary but in fact inviting.
I also served leftovers over jeera rice, and the next day stuffed them into [redacted leftovers vehicle that I’ll be writing about soon]. If I get collards again next week, I’ll be making this again next week. It is the sort of comforting dish I want for fall, but not so heavy I didn’t want to eat on Wednesday when temperatures hit a perfectly normal 94 September degrees in Brooklyn.
Is this the most budget-friendly dish in the entire book? Listen, I’m not sure.3 It calls for a whole cup of heavy cream, which is definitely the most expensive ingredient by volume. (I have long been a fan of sturdy greens doused in cream.) Many people will need/want to buy a few spices and mustard oil for this, but I’d argue those are things you’ll use in the future, hopefully things that can serve as jumping-off points for more delicious things. (Amchur, with its puckering tartness, is a great ingredient to keep on hand for when you’re done cooking something but it needs a little boost. I’m going through mine fast.) Plus, I’m including Bhatt’s recipe for pickled collard greens, which will use up the stems you discard in prepping your saag, and leave you with a condiment to spoon over whatever you’re eating over the next few weeks.
Lastly, I just need you to look at this cornbread I made from I Am From Here, which is spicy and gingery and carries the lingering char of corn and jalapeños blistered over a gas flame. You top it with chhonk!! I used coconut oil! The book—it’s great!
Saag-Style Collards
From Vishwesh Bhatt’s I Am From Here
Serves 4 to 5
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 tablespoons ghee
2 cups minced yellow onion (1 to 1 1/2 large onions)
1 tablespoon minced ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 1/4 teaspoons garam masala
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
2 1/2 pounds collard greens, tough ribs and stems removed, leaves finely chopped (* to 10 cups, from about 2 bunches)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon mustard seed oil or peanut oil
1/2 teaspoon amchur (dried mango powder)
1/2 teaspoon sugar
Toast the coriander seeds in a small, dry pan over medium heat for about 1 minute. Add the cumin seeds and toast, shaking the pan gently so that the seeds toast evenly and do not burn, until both spices are fragrant, about 1 more minute. Remove from the heat and, when cool enough to handle, crush with a mortar and pestle or grind coarsely in a spice grinder or coffee grinder. Set aside.
Heat the ghee in a Dutch oven or other wide, heavy-bottomed pot over medium-low heat until fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes. add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until they are caramelized, about 40 minutes4. Cooking the onions low and slow until they caramelize is the key in this recipe; be patient and do not rush this step. You are looking for most of the liquid to cook out and for the onions to take on a caramel-brown color. They will break down to more of a paste consistency than individual pieces.
Once the onions have caramelized, add the ginger and garlic and cook, stirring, for 3 to 4 minutes. Add the tomato paste, stir, and cook for 3 to 4 minutes more. Stir in the crushed coriander and cumin, garam masala, and turmeric and cook for 2 to 3 more minutes, until fragrant. Add 3/4 cup water and stir, scraping up any bits that may have stuck to the bottom. At this point, you should have a richly fragrant prown paste in the bottom of the pot. Stir in the greens and salt. Mix very well to coat the greens in the onion and spice paste. Turn the heat down to low, cover, and cook until the greens have begun to soften and are no longer crunchy, about 20 minutes. They will wilt and reduce substantially. Stir in the cream, cover, and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, until the cream has thickened and the greens are cooked through. You may need to add a touch more water if the greens appear too dry. Stir in the mustard oil, amchur, and sugar. Taste and season with additional salt if needed. Indian restaurants in the United States often serve a very smooth saag. If you prefer that smooth texture, blend the greens with an immersion blender before serving. (I do not blend my saag.) (I didn’t either —MB) Serve hot.
Okay, fine, I’m actually going to include the photo of the saag, but please don’t let my bad lighting put you off, this stuff is so good.
Pickled Collard Green Stems
Makes 1 1/2 Quarts; easily halves
4 cups diced (1/2-inch) tender collard stems (from 4-5 bunches)
1 cup diced (1/2-inch) Granny Smith apple
2 cups apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup apple juice
1/4 cup thinly sliced garlic (8 to 10 cloves)
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
6 whole cloves
3 bay leaves
2 teaspoons hot sauce (I used a smoked onion hot sauce that was custom made for Emily’s cousin’s Bar Mitzvah—it was really good. Thanks Jake!)
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. While the water is heating, fill a large bowl with cold water and ice cubes. When the water boils, add the collard stems. After 1 minute, transfer the stems to the ice bath. Drain and pat dry. This blanchin and shocking step cooks out some of the toughness of the stems and sets the color. Mix the collard stems with the diced apple in a large nonreactive bowl; set aside.
Combine the vinegar, apple juice, garlic, brown sugar, salt, cayenne, coriander seeds, cloves, bay leaves, and hot sauce in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Once the sugar and salt are completely dissolved, remove the pan from the heat and let cool for 5 minutes. Pour the liquid over the stems and apple and stir to combine. Allow the mixture to cool completely, then store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. The pickled stems will keep in the refrigerator for about 2 weeks.
I’ve decided that my favorite beach lunch at the Rockaways is the fried fish sandwich from Red Hook Lobster Pound ($17). Sorry to Rippers! Still need that beach juice though glug glug
Further amchur reading/inspo: this chicken recipe from Priya Krishna; Max Falkowitz’s rasam; Madhur Jaffrey’s spicy-sour potatoes; I WILL be making this watermelon chaat!
For next month’s Cookbook On A Budget I’ll do a recipe for, like, peas and carrots
Bhatt claims this will happen in 20 minutes; it took me at least 40.
That recipe sounds delicious, and I’m really happy to now have a new way of cooking collards!