Comfort Food

I've been doing flying trapeze as a way to balance martial arts, salsa, and biking since those seem to fatigue my legs a lot.  Except that some of the harder tricks I've started to learn are taking a toll on my body and after doing a killer trapeze-martial arts-salsa-biking-trapeze triple header, my body felt like it was about to fall apart.  All I wanted to do after my last trapeze class was hunker down with a hot plate of comfort food and start reading Anthony Bourdain's new book Medium Raw. 

My fridge was nearly empty as my CSA pickup day is Wednesday and well, it was a Tuesday night.  I briefly contemplated running out to Whole Paycheck for something easy.  A big bunch of beautiful collard greens rediscovered in my veggie drawer, garlic from last week's CSA basket, along with some red chili peppers from my garden inspired Linguine with Spicy Collard Greens and Bacon.  This dish is a rich hearty dish, something that would be more appropriate for a crisp fall day. For me, it was perfect because the air conditioning is on full blast in my apartment keeping it at a cool 68 degrees while my latest batch of home brew ferments (mmmm, London Porter on the way!). Sometimes, its the simple dishes that are the best. For me, simple dishes that allow me to incorporate all of my CSA or farm stand or Farmer's Market goodies are the best. This dish, aside from the linguine, is 100% local and organic.

I browned in my cast iron skillet 1 thick slice of homemade bacon sliced into lardons (google it... I had no idea what the heck a lardon was until I started making my own bacon), 1 thinly sliced shallot, 4 cloves of garlic minced, and 4 red chili peppers minced.  Then I added a bunch of sliced collard greens with the thick stems removed and wilted them down.  Then I added about 8-10 pieces of dried farm stand tomatos and let them slightly rehydrate.  Season with a tiny bit of salt and liberal amounts of pepper.  Add linguine cooked al dente -- I used about 1/3 box of linguine -- and add a drizzle of olive oil and toss while still on medium heat.

The dish was good, not great, because there were 3 things missing from this dish.  While the dried tomatos provided the perfect amount of sweetness and the peppers provided just the right amount of kick to offset the wonderfully bitter collard greens and the fatty bacon, it needed: (1) a tiny bit of acid, maybe a dash of cider vinegar or white wine; (2) toasted pine nuts or walnuts to add some texture; and (3) a little shaving of parmesan instead of the salt to add some depth.  Of course, I knew all of this when I made the dish.  I was just determined not to have to go to the grocery store... sometimes you have to know when to rest and not let the food control you.  Ha.