Last weekend, I stopped by Native Roots Market for some groceries, hoping to find some inspiration while I was there. Some beautiful, local collard greens from my friends at Peach Crest Farm caught my eye. It seems strange that after living in the borderline-Southern state of Oklahoma my whole life, I’d never tried collard greens. I’ve been trying to branch out and try different kinds of produce, so into the basket went the collard greens.
At home, I tore off a little piece and nibbled on it, raw. Nothing special, tasted sort of like kale. Later, I recalled some collard wraps I’ve seen in blogland and tried using blanched collard leaves as wraps for the last of my lentil curry. The taste wasn’t worth the effort.
Then I recalled my friend Matt telling me how great collard greens are when they’re sliced super thin, so I got to googling. I googled my way past all the slow-cooked, bacon-heavy Paula Deen recipes and found a tutorial for Brazilian collard greens.
The idea is to slice the greens as thin as possible, and sauté them for just a few minutes, until they’re dark green and fragrant. The technical term for this slicing technique is chiffonade. I tried cooking up one big leaf in this manner for “dessert” and hello, lover! I’m smitten with collard greens. This lively spaghetti dish came to me as I twirled my fork in those spicy, skinny greens and fortunately, it is just as good in reality as it was in my head.
I don’t know whether to call this recipe Southern due to the collard greens, or Brazilian because of the method, or Italian since it’s a pasta dish. Southern-Brazilian-Italian fusion, anyone? Never mind. Whatever you want to call this dish, it’s spicy and bright, with bold lemon flavor, and comes together in a flash! The one-to-one ratio of whole wheat spaghettini to produce is just the way I like my pasta. I hope you’ll give collard greens another chance with this lemony pasta recipe.
