Coconut curried greens

A grad student’s routine, nostalgia for a Cambridge food truck, and a dare taken from the giant leaves of collard and kale in my fridge.

I’ve never been too good at using braising greens. They’re delicious when done well, but too often I’ve ended up with a bland, stringy pile of dark green sludge.

A voluminous bundle of collards has taunted me every time I’ve opened the fridge this past week. Niall picked them up with the farm share, and now I feel like the leaves are challenging me to a dare.

I was, for the second time this week, inspired by an Instagram post. Perhaps this time I was more emboldened than inspired.

Some may scoff at the Instagram’s encouragement of amateur food photography, but I delight in the colorful arrangements of edibles that grace my feed. I seek out and follow restaurants and fellow foodies, and often glean ideas for meals I’ve never tried.

Lately I’ve been watching one of my old Boston-area haunts: Clover Food Lab. Clover made the first meal I ate in Cambridge (chickpea fritter platter and a cold brew coffee at Harvard Square, in case you were wondering), and they later sustained me during my busiest days at MIT. My grad school daily routine often went as follows:

6am

Feet on the floor, then down the back stairs of the coop to let the chickens out to run. Harvest fresh eggs, cook up some bacon and fry winter squash or root vegetables in the fat. Fry up one of those lovely eggs, too. Cover in Sriracha and devour with an Aeropressed cafe Cubano. Attempt the daily crossword. Dress in brightly colored clothing and bike to the East side of campus.

8ish

Frantically print out the paper you’ve just finished, skim the science section of the Times, and go to class. Drink more coffee, eat some chocolate from the mini fridge in Shannon’s office. They’re assorted truffles, they’re too sweet, and they’re very good cold. Go to the lab after class to read, write, and get into shenanigans/arguments with the other grad students.

Noon

Go to the Clover food truck behind the Media Lab. Definitely go through the Media Lab gallery because it’s either wicked cold or wicked hot out right now, and there’s probably a cool exhibit on the ground floor. If the Kendall Square location is open, go to that and be surrounded by hungry people about to taste sweet sustenance. Whatever you order, get rosemary fries with it. They are perfect. They are the most perfect thing in the world right now. Dump Sriracha on those, too, because apparently you want the flavor of red hot garlic fire to dominate every meal you consume.

PM

More class, more reading & writing. Happen upon some free food somewhere and take more than is polite, maybe get a drink at the Muddy and go to a talk. Go home.

Dinner

Eat whatever wonderful vegan GF dinner has been prepared by your housemates. It’s probably some combination of roast vegetables beans/chickpeas, rice, and salad; because there are about thirty of you wild children and everyone has to do kitchen duty once a week. The food is deliciously and uniquely spiced by whoever is cooking that night, but might also need a little more protein.

Later

Close the chicken coop. Drink lots of soymilk, probably make a glass of chocolate soymilk. Have some tea, make music or desserts with housemates. Shower in the “party shower,” (beer optional) or whichever shower is open and clean. Have a glass of Malbec from the box and attempt to get more writing in. Or don’t, maybe just drink the Malbec and have a good cry. Maybe watch some Adventure Time. Call Niall, or if it’s Friday just retreat by bus to Western Massachusetts.

10pm

SLEEP NOW or lose your tenuous grasp on your mental health. If you have to finish this paper at 5am tomorrow, do that, but for the love of butter do not stay up past ten.

So, somewhere in the middle of my day, there was either leftover dinner or Clover Food Lab. I loved Clover because they were consistently good, and somehow they made carrot slaw taste like magic. They made perfectly-fried eggplant rounds, and eclectic house sodas (ginger? carrot? shiso?!) that were only just as sweet as they needed to be. I loved their methodical approach to food development, their attention to style, their use of unique ingredients.

I only discovered their blog this year upon trying to learn their eggplant secrets, and it makes me wish I lived close enough to go to food development meetings. They just so happen to source their produce from several of the farms here in the valley, including Next Barn Over — the source of my weekly share and the aforementioned collards. Among their events, they recently posted a disappearing video of the results of an “Iron Chef” style ingredients challenge. They, too, had collards to braise — and posted a glimpse of a bowl of coconut curried greens and onions.

They gave me no choice. They upped the collards’ dare to a double dog dare and it was time to venture into a verdant evening of recipe development. I had to make it. But with only a short clip to go off of, I would have to find my own way on this one.

My initial search for “coconut collards” did not look promising — several recipes cropped up at the top (because Google knows that I am always looking up recipes): all had three or less stars, and only a handful of people testing them out. I felt less alone about my failure at using collards, but I felt more discouraged about my dinner.

After a little more digging and a few different queries, I had better luck with “curried collards.” I picked a recipe as a guide, and went to work in the kitchen. I had some pleasure tearing up those thick, dark leaves.

I did what I often do, which is to work with what I have. After about thirty minutes I had a lovely green curry with orange and purple flecks, and some crispy fragrant chickpeas on the side. These are the best collards I’ve ever made. That’s not saying much, but I liked them enough that I think I’ll pick up another handful on my next trip to the barn. I hope we become fast friends, these greens and I.

Coconut Curried Greens

Ingredients

• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 3 garlic scapes, chopped into 1/2 inch morsels
• 2 hearty handfuls braising greens (collards, kale, etc), destemmed and torn into pieces. Keep softer greens (like kale or spinach) separate from heartier ones (like collards).
• 1 cup assorted chopped vegetables (I used carrots and red cabbage, but you can use just about anything)
• 2 tsp curry powder
• 1/2 tsp ginger powder
• 1 can full-fat coconut milk
• Salt to taste

Instructions

1. Preheat a large skillet over medium-low heat. Spoon about 2 tbsp of fat from the top of the coconut milk , and sautee the onions and scapes for about 5 minutes.
2. Stir in hearty greens, chopped vegetables, ginger powder and half the curry powder. Cook for another 5 minutes.
3. Add the rest of the coconut milk. Stir in soft greens and the remaining curry powder. Cover and steam for a few more minutes.
4. Salt to taste and serve.

Adapted from a Minimalist Baker recipe.