Years ago, I went back to college to get a teaching
degree. After banging around the
Philadelphia area restaurant scene for a bunch of years, I noticed a couple of
things. First, everyone’s bodies were
broken. The cumulative effects of a savage
work environment and no health care had taken their toll on most of the good
people working in the back of the house.
Everyone I saw was bent, broken, burned, cut and just plain worn down by
their daily existence. At that time (and
to this day) restaurants did not provide any sort of medical plan, or at least
not the kind of insurance that was affordable for the brigands I knew.
Consequently, cooks would only go to the doc with something
life-threatening and even then, they would wait until their day off, because
they couldn’t miss the day of pay or would get fired for showing up late. Good people worked with a lot of serious
pain. There were no options. I once knew a guy who broke both bones in his
forearm on a Tuesday night. Yeah, he had
been drinking and I know it was insurance fraud, but he waited until Friday,
then pretended to fall off the loading dock, so that he could go the worker’s
comp route and get the arm looked at.
Like I said, he had no options. The doctor wanted to amputate. He played with a busted wing until it healed. Thank God for Obamacare. It is nowhere near perfect, but affordable
care is available now.
The other thing I realized was that everyone in the kitchen was
a messed up basket case of swirling addictions and aberrant behaviors. It was the stress. I spent 12 to 14 hours a day with people who
were entertaining, displaying every kind of kink listed in the DSM. The front of the house had to put on a show
of being kinda normal, so they didn’t scare the straights who came for dinner. The gang in the back just let it all fly. Drink, drugs and every kind of perversion reigned. And that was when they were clocked in! Even the good ones were alcoholics on their
third wife.
I didn’t want to end up that way.
So, I went to college.
Consider this an endorsement of community colleges. For a really cheap price, I was able to grab
up ½ the credits needed to graduate. I was
also exposed to some of the best teachers that I ever had, probably because the
focus was on educating, not grinding out publications. Dr. Randolph Jones taught my Philosophy
class, a required survey course that quickly devolved into Jones harassing the
13th graders in the class, telling them that they came from racist
areas and had better change their way of thinking. You see, Dr. Jones was a Methodist minister
from Germantown and damn angry at the white privilege that he saw in Blue Bell,
PA. I don’t know how he kept his job,
but of course, he was right. He once
commented that he wouldn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance until he “got his forty
acres and a mule.” As the only old guy
in the class, I ended up blowing off all the assignments, with Jones’
permission, and writing a long paper about how different denominations view
suffering in modern America. I loved the
guy.
Dr. Jones invited the class to his church for a Martin
Luther King Day service. Since I greatly
respected him and since he raved about the choir that would be singing that day,
I grabbed a couple of my kids and took them to church in a really rough end of
town. Surprise, I was the only one from
the class to make it. The service was fantastic,
uplifting in a way that I had never experienced before. Jones’ people celebrated the life of Dr. King
in a way that showed pride in King and the movement’s accomplishments. They couldn’t have been more welcoming. His members went out of their way to make me
and my kids feel like special guests, an invaluable part of their big day.
Now, back to the food.
Fellowship after the service was unbelievable. A full meal was provided, starting with rice
and beans. There were collards and
beautiful, crispy fried chicken. Dessert
was a slew of pies, each better than the one before. As good as the meal was, the talk was
better. I was not at the time used to openly
discussing my faith with strangers, but fell into it quickly. Eventually, the discussion got around to food. We did a comparison of how French and Soul
Food cooks would prepare greens, trading recipes scribbled in napkins and
church bulletins. I still have mine. Now you do too. Collards or mustards work well in either
recipe.
_____
Greens (Soul
Food style)
2 bunches
greens, stemmed, washed and roughly chopped
1 ham hock
1 cup
spanish onion, diced
2 cloves
garlic, chopped
2 cups water
salt and
pepper
Cut some of
the fatty pork off of the ham hock and sweat out the fat in a large, heavy pot
with a tight fitting lid. Sauté the onions
in the fat until transparent, about 3 minutes, add the garlic and the rest of
the ham hock, still on the bone.
Add the
greens, sauté until limp, then add the water, season lightly with salt and
pepper. Lower the heat, cover and stew the
greens for an hour, stirring occasionally.
After an
hour cooking time, the greens will have stewed down and be tender. Adjust the seasoning with salt and
pepper. Serve hot. Leave the bone in the greens. My kids fight over it.
_____
Greens (French
style)
2 bunches
greens, stemmed, washed and sliced into ¼ inch strips
3 slices of
bacon, sliced into ¼ inch strips
1 carrot,
finely diced
1 cup
spanish onion, finely diced
2 cloves
garlic, chopped
2 bay leaves
1 tbs. chopped
fresh thyme
1 cup strong
chicken stock
salt and
pepper
Heat a large
pot of salted water to boiling. Blanch
the greens for ten minutes in the boiling water, drain then cool them in a
colander under cold running water.
Put the bacon
in a small pot, cover with water. Bring
the pot of water to a boil, then drain the water and reserve the bacon. This process will remove the smoke flavor
from the bacon.
In a large
heavy pot over low heat, sauté the bacon until it renders it’s fat. Add the carrot, onion, garlic, bay leaf and
thyme, salt and pepper. Sauté the
aromatics for a minute, add the greens to the pot.
Turn the
greens so that they are coated with the aromatics. Pour in the chicken stock, turn the heat on
high and cook down the stock, glazing the greens. Serve hot.
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