And a bunch is how big?

As my friend Christie and I were leaving Manhattan Fruit Exchange with our 4 (!) bags of ingredients for the gumbo, I turned to her and said, "I'm not sure I've a pot big enough for this." See for yourself. My guess is there were more than 7 pounds of greens.



Anyone with a folic acid or vitamin K deficiency, this is the recipe for you!

I measured out the gallon of water the recipe called for, and we realized straight away that there was no way that it would even begin to cover 10 bunches of greens and a cabbage. We hopped on Google to see if there was some sort of standardization for a "bunch" that we didn't know about. Maybe bunches have gotten bigger, like serving sizes, in the 43 years since the cookbook's publication. But no luck. Answers ranged anywhere from 10 oz. or 1 lb. to "its whatever your grocer bundles together." Not all that helpful, and seriously 11 lbs of cooked greens just seemed so wrong.

After some debate, we decided to compromise by halving the bunches and increasing the amount of water. But even using just half of the bunches we needed to more than double the amount of water to 2 gallons and 4 cups. And I was right, I didn't have one pot big enough to hold all the greens, so I had to divide it into two.


After we finished figuring out how were were going to proceed with the cooking, we set about washing the greens. Something that isn't made at all explicit in the original recipe is how long it takes to wash this many greens. Forever might be a good place to start. I also cut the hard stems out of the collards, and off of the dandelions and carrot tops. Christie chopped half of the cabbage into large shreds. (Full disclosure: I had to replace the mustard greens with dandelions, since every New York City green grocer seems to have something against them and never have them in stock.) But the greens got washed, banged into the pots, and covered with water.

The next instructions in the recipe called for us to "boil the greens together about 2 hours." I realize that the model I set out for this project calls for me to cook the original recipe as best I can as written, then to offer up a revised, tweaked or clarified recipe to follow, but I just couldn't do it. Boiling for 2 hours seemed beyond excessive even for 11 lbs. of greens, much less 3. I brought the greens to a boil and then lowered the heat to medium-low to allow the greens to simmer. I thought I would use the collards as a judge for exactly how long to cook everything, since they're toughest and would take the longest to cook to tender. I doubted that would be 2 hours.



It ended up taking about an hour for the collards to cook until tender. Instead of finely chopping the greens by hand, I thought I'd save some time by using a food processor. Using a large slotted spoon, I removed the greens to the bowl of the processor, and processed the greens in batches, reserving the puree and the water that the greens were cooked in.


Whatever you do, do not taste the greens at this point. As Christie said, "Yum. Tastes like dirt."

The next step in the recipe I found to be one of the hardest, and I'm not entirely certain why. It calls for 1 lb. of diced veal and 1 lb. of diced ham to be simmered in shortening. Gag! Crisco is one of the few products that I just find totally disgusting and idea that meat was going to be simmering in it even more repellent. But in the spirit of the project I sucked it up, and the veal and ham simmered away, and as Christie reminded me, I don't really have a problem trotting out a dish that has 3 sticks of butter. So what the fuck?




After the veal and ham simmered in the shortening (barely repressed shudder!) over a medium heat, one large chopped onion and a tablespoon of chopped parsley were added and cooked until brown--roughly six minutes.




The next step is one I found really cool. The chopped greens are added to the skillet and used to deglaze the pan and further reduce the liquid out of the greens. The recipe calls for 15 minutes, but even over a medium-low heat, the greens started to stick to the bottom of the pan, so I cut the cooking time down to 6 minutes. I combined the cooking water into one pot, then added the contents of the skillet to the stock. (This step is entirely omitted from the original recipe). I also added the spices.

I brought the gumbo to a boil, then reduced the heat to low and let it simmer for 1 hour.


After an hour, I adjusted the seasoning. I was surprised at how much salt the dish needed and how little cayenne--less than a tsp. for the cayenne, and more than 6 tsp of salt. Instead of paprika, I opted to put some gumbo file out on the table so that we could add at will.

After out initial taste of the pureed greens, I think both Christie and I were expecting not to like this very much. Dirt soup. Yay! Yet I have to say the final result was surprisingly good, so much so that Christie and I both had two bowls. The allspice, clove and thyme trio, which seemed so odd on the page, really mellowed in the cooking and added a layer of flavor that was hard to identify, but took the harsh edge off of the greens and added to the richness of the dish. I'm really interested to see how flavors develop overnight in the fridge.

In the next entry, I'll do the updated recipe. As it stands, it tastes really wonderful, so the tweaks will be minimal--more clarifications than changes. The ham and veal were a little lost, as the greens and herbs pack an enormous punch, so I'm thinking about how that could be made a bit better. However, the biggest change will be figuring out the volume of greens to use. A bunch is definitely not a bunch.