OPB’s “Superabundant” explores the stories behind the foods of the Pacific Northwest with videos, articles and this weekly newsletter. Every week, Heather Arndt Anderson, a Portland-based culinary historian, food writer and ecologist, highlights different aspects of the region’s food ecosystem. This week she offers a recipe for collard greens with smoked turkey necks (not the buckwheat crepes and crab promised in last week’s newsletter, but a good one nonetheless).
Click here to subscribe. For previous stories, go here.
February is Black History Month, a time to reflect on the contributions Black Americans have made and continue to make to this nation. While these contributions are too myriad to name, they include a few of my favorite things: jazz and soul food. Like peanut butter and chocolate, jazz and soul food are two great tastes that taste great together, and not only invite improvisation — they’re defined by it. Creativity and resourcefulness are just as important in the kitchen as they are behind a piano or a horn.
Portland’s own jazz legend Mel Brown made an entire record named after one savory ingredient that is as at home in a Jewish grandmother’s kitchen as it is in the Harlem Renaissance — do you know what it is? Read on to find out!
Oops! All Price Hikes
News about the rising costs of food are becoming the wallpaper to my media scrolling these days (and probably yours!), but the more economists get into the minutiae of which ingredients could/might be most affected, the more I wonder what a more seasonal diet might look like. Not to toxic-positivity this thread, but maybe a growth mindset helps here: Can I get by without a juicy margarita? I’d strongly prefer not to, but can I live without fresh tomatoes or raspberries in February? Absolutely.
Oregon ag is an export witness
The impacts of tariffs could look different closer to home, but Oregon farmers, who produce wheat, hazelnuts, fruit and other agricultural products that are worth more than $2 billion globally, may take a noticeable hit when tariffs go into effect. OPB’s Alejandro Figueroa reports on how the issue impacts the Northwest.
🎶…and on this farm, he had an octopus 🎶
In other, more aquatic farm news, the Statesman Journal reports that a new Oregon bill proposes to ban octopus farming in the state, citing pollution concerns and the cruelty of farming an intelligent animal for food among its reasons. (I’m not sure if the bill’s backers know what happens on regular farms…?) As of a few months ago, Washington and California already have similar precautionary bans in place.
Snacks for a Superb Owl
Sportsball events are coming to a Sunday near you (this one, in fact), but don’t overthink the snacks — I’ve developed tons of Super Bowl recipes over the years so you don’t have to! You can never go wrong with a tiny meatball or miniature smoked sausage on a toothpick (they’re equally delicious with blackberry barbecue sauce or spicy-sweet sambal). There’s always a place for chicken skewers with tzatziki dip, soft pretzel rolls with cheese dip or Buffalo chicken sliders with blue cheese and celery slaw. Finally, my favorite nacho dip: Kimchi, chorizo and queso — three ingredients that you never realized belong on the same chip. (I don’t have a recipe for this one, but I did just tell you all the ingredients.)
I still can’t get enough of winter greens. Escarole may be the Mary Bennet to radicchio’s Jane, but it’s nonetheless a beautiful addition to salads and hot sandwiches. It loves crisp apples and sharp cheeses, and is a nice match for the bitterness of walnuts. Winter leeks are also in their prime, and as artist/farmer Katie Kulla points out, growing them takes a lot of planning, so thank your local farmer when you see good ones!
Winter citrus continues to add bright acidity to cakes, salads and drinks. Cozy project idea: maybe you’ve already tried making your own preserved lemons for North African and Middle Eastern dishes, but have you ever tried using limes instead? Have you tried using sugar instead of salt? Layer a jar with halved or quartered citrus fruits, topping with sugar as you go until the jar is full (make sure the sugar is covering the top of the fruit). Close the jar and stash it in the fridge for a few weeks, then use the syrup and macerated fruit for topping biscuits, yogurt and anything else your little heart desires.
If you’re stressing out about egg shortages (and the price jumps), you might be eyeing egg substitutes. Depending on what you’re cooking, you have a few options. If you need eggs to bring tenderness to cakes or breads, you can probably get away with the tried-and-true vegan hack, the flax “egg” or xanthan gum, but if it’s for a scramble I’d probably go with soft or silken tofu. If you need the lift of meringue, try whipping bean liquid, or aquafaba — it has enough protein to create a stable matrix (you can beat it into a foam like an egg white). Yamaimo (aka mountain yam or nagaimo; a Japanese tuber available in Asian grocery stores) can also bring the mucilaginous binding effect of an egg. And of course, Portland hippies of a certain vintage may recall the Daily Grind’s fudgy vegan brownies, which used mashed bananas in place of eggs.
Lately, in the “Superabundant” kitchen
✨ I had a few friends over for dinner and steamed a whole rockfish in shaoxing wine with lots of garlic, scallions and ginger. It was simple, delicious and sure to bring good luck this Year of the Snake. Pro-tip: if you see whole, fresh, wild-caught rockfish, there’s a good chance it came from the Oregon coast even if it’s sitting on ice alongside non-local fish like branzino or parrotfish.
✨ Long story, but I had about a pound of meaty duck bones left over from the Peking duck I enjoyed with my “Superabundant” coworkers for Lunar New Year, so I chucked it into a pot with a rotisserie chicken carcass and let it simmer all day. It was so gelatinous that I could feel the wrinkles evaporating from my face as I sipped the broth! I used some of the broth for a fridge-purging chicken noodle soup with somen.
✨ As a European-American mom, I am constantly pushing dairy products on my kid. He likes milk just fine, but sometimes I make him a glass of quickie/cheater horchata by stirring in a little honey, cinnamon and a few drops of almond extract. This is also lovely warm.
Recipe: Collard greens with smoked turkey necks
A mess of collards and smoked turkey necks, with plenty of cornbread to sop up the pot likker
Heather Arndt Anderson / OPB
From the time I was in 5th grade until I started high school, my mom was a cook at a cavernous jazz club called The Hobbit, located on the corner of Southeast Holgate and 39th Avenue (now Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard). She’d come home in her stained houndstooth pants, smelling of aerosolized meat and cigarettes and thoroughly worn out, but once a week or so, she’d come home full of pep. “Mel came in today!”
My mom didn’t care much for cooking, but she loved jazz, so the occasional friendly chat with local jazz leviathan Mel Brown* (who had a weekly gig there a decade or so after cutting his first studio record, “Chicken Fat”) was one of the few perks of the job. She’d gush about how cool he was to the back of the house, or that he’d enjoyed the sandwich she fixed him during his soundcheck, stuff like that. The corner is now a Walgreens, but in the 1980s, it was just another joint where you could see live jazz on any given night of the week.
*(Fun fact: Brown’s son Christopher is seen playing with his quintet in the “Superabundant” Chardonnay episode.)
I never had a chance to eat at The Hobbit before it closed, but I have a pretty good idea of what type of food they served, because Portland’s jazz clubs have all been serving more or less the same bill of fare for about a century: You’ve got your steaks and chops (and usually a burger or prime rib), you’ve got various potatoes and other fried delights, and if the music is really good, you’ve got some soul food.
If the dearth of historic menus is any indication, for most of Portland’s jazz history, the food in the venues was the least of anyone’s consideration; some places, though, made an effort to offer more than just stiff drinks. Ads from newspaper archives suggest that both the Cotton Club and Geneva’s Restaurant and Lounge served the same hot link sausages from Neighborhood Bill’s, a market that sold a house-made, Southern country-style hot link sausage that was also stocked by several other Albina grocers. The Cotton Club, located on North Vancouver Street in the 1960s and ‘70s, was owned by (the unofficial mayor of Northeast Portland) Paul Knauls, whose wife Geneva was lauded for her fried chicken.
After a few decades of operation, Neighborhood Bill’s was bought in the early 1980s by Theotis Cason, who’d grown up working at the market and has been running Cason’s Fine Meats (possibly Oregon’s oldest Black-owned meat market) for decades.
Cason is from a large family and his meat market is still largely a family business; one employee, André Roberson, is a nephew of the family whose grandfather ran one of the earliest urban truck gardens in North Portland, serving as a Black analog to the Italian produce markets operating at the same time in Southeast Portland. When I mentioned that I’d stopped into Cason’s to learn more about Black history (and that my grandpa and dad had grown up in the neighborhood) something in him became activated. He mentioned the collards his grandpa grew, about summer jobs picking beans. We shared a gripe about the price of ham hocks and eggs (we have backyard hens in common, buffering us both from the costs of the latter), and he mentioned his involvement with the Black Food Sovereignty Coalition, a grass-roots organization that aims to empower communities of color to produce and improve access to culturally significant foods.
(Overhearing our conversation, Mr. Theotis Cason himself chimed in to acknowledge that while the economy or society might be taking a step backwards, that it’s never been more important to carry on. The man is a bulwark in this community.)
Anyway, long story short, winter greens like collards happen to be in season, and the smoked turkey necks behind the glass at Cason’s looked particularly meaty, so this week’s recipe was an easy decision. I usually leave my greens a little on the al dente side, but collards are better when they’re simmered into silkiness. These greens are an excellent side dish for fried fish, beans, rice and cornbread — now please flip the record and pass the hot sauce. Serves 6-8
Ingredients
2 tablespoons bacon fat or olive oil
1 pound smoked turkey necks (or smoked chicken thighs)
1 medium white or yellow onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, smashed
3-4 bunches collard greens, washed and coarsely chopped
1 quart (4 cups) low-sodium vegetable broth
1 tablespoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons black pepper
2 tablespoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 teaspoon sugar (optional)
⅓ cup apple cider vinegar or ¼ cup white vinegar
Hot sauce for serving
Instructions
- Heat the oil or bacon fat in a large, heavy bottomed pot over medium heat, then add the turkey necks, onion and garlic and cook, stirring, until the onion begins to turn glossy and fragrant.
- Add the collards, stirring to coat in the fat, then add the broth, seasonings and vinegar. Cover and reduce heat to low, then simmer until the greens are tender and the meat is falling from the turkey necks, about an hour.
- Pull the meat off the bones and return it to the greens, then serve.