Collard (plant)

Collard greens are known as sukuma in Swahilli and are one of the most common vegetables in East Africa.[13] Sukuma is mainly lightly sauteed in oil until tender, flavoured with onions and seasoned with salt, and served either as the main accompaniment or as a side dish with meat or fish. In Congo, Tanzania and Kenya (East Africa), thinly sliced collard greens are the main accompaniments of a popular dish known as sima or ugali (a maize flour cake).

Collards have been cultivated in Europe for thousands of years with references to the Greeks and Romans back to the 1st Century.[14] In Montenegro, Dalmatia and Herzegovina, collard greens, locally known as raštika or raštan, were traditionally one of the staple vegetables. It is particularly popular in the winter, stewed with smoked mutton (kaštradina) or cured pork, root vegetables and potatoes.[15] Known in Turkey as kara lahana ("dark cabbage"), it is a staple in the Black Sea area.

Collard greens are a staple vegetable in Southern U.S. cuisine.[16][17][18] They are often prepared with other similar green leaf vegetables, such as spinach, kale, turnip greens, and mustard greens in the dish called "mixed greens". Typically used in combination with collard greens are smoked and salted meats (ham hocks, smoked turkey drumsticks, smoked turkey necks, pork neckbones, fatback or other fatty meat), diced onions, vinegar, salt, and black pepper, white pepper, or crushed red pepper, and some cooks add a small amount of sugar. Traditionally, collards are eaten on New Year's Day, along with black-eyed peas or field peas and cornbread, to ensure wealth in the coming year.[16] Cornbread is used to soak up the "pot liquor", a nutrient-rich collard broth. Collard greens may also be thinly sliced and fermented to make a collard sauerkraut that is often cooked with flat dumplings. Landrace collard in-situ genetic diversity and ethnobotany are subjects of research for citizen-science groups.[10]

During slavery, collards were one of the most common plants grown in kitchen gardens and were used to supplement the rations provided by plantation owners.[19] Greens were widely used because the plants could last through the winter weather and could withstand the heat of a southern summer even more so than spinach or lettuce.[19]

Broadly, collard greens symbolize Southern culture and African-American culture and identity. For example, jazz composer and pianist, Thelonious Monk, sported a collard leaf in his lapel to represent his African-American heritage.[20] In President Barack Obama's first state dinner, collard greens were included on the menu. Novelist and poet Alice Walker used collards to reference the intersection of African-American heritage and black women.[20] There have been many collard festivals that celebrate African-American identity, including those in Port Wentworth, Georgia (since 1997), East Palo Alto, California (since 1998), Columbus, Ohio (since 2010), and Atlanta, Georgia (since 2011). In 2010, the Latibah Collard Greens Museum opened in Charlotte, North Carolina.[20]

Many explorers in the late nineteenth century have written about the pervasiveness of collards in Southern cooking particularly among black Americans. In 1869, Hyacinth, a traveler during the Civil War, for example, observed that collards could be found anywhere in the south.[21] In 1972, another observer, Stearns, echoed that sentiment claiming that collards were present in every black Southerner's garden.[21] In 1883, a writer commented on the fact that there is no word or dish more popular among poorer whites and blacks than collard greens.[21] The collard sandwich—consisting of fried cornbread, collard greens, and fatback—is a popular dish among the Lumbee people in Robeson County, North Carolina.[22]

Caldo verde, a popular Portuguese soup made with collard greens

In Portuguese and Brazilian cuisine, collard greens (or couve) are a common accompaniment to fish and meat dishes. They make up a standard side dish for feijoada, a popular pork and beans-style stew.[23] These Brazilian and Portuguese cultivars are likely members of a distinct non-heading cultivar group of Brassica oleracea, specifically the Tronchuda Group.

Thinly-sliced collard greens are also a main ingredient of a popular Portuguese soup, the caldo verde ("green broth"). For this broth, the leaves are sliced into strips, 2–3 mm (3⁄32–1⁄8 in) wide (sometimes by a grocer or market vendor using a special hand-cranked slicer) and added to the other ingredients 15 minutes before it is served.

In Kashmir,[24][25] collard greens (haakh) are included in most meals.[26] Leaves are harvested by pinching in early spring when the dormant buds sprout and give out tender leaves known as kaanyil haakh. When the extending stem bears alternate leaves in quick succession during the growing season, older leaves are harvested periodically. In late autumn, the apical portion of the stem is removed along with the whorled leaves. There are several dishes made with haakh. A common dish eaten with rice is haak rus, a soup of whole collard leaves cooked simply with water, oil, salt, green chilies and spices.

In Zimbabwe, collard greens are known as umbhida in Ndebele and muriwo in Shona. Due to the climate, the plant thrives under almost all conditions, with most people growing it in their gardens.[27] It is commonly eaten with sadza (ugali in East Africa, pap in South Africa, and polenta in Italy) as part of the staple food.[28] Umbhida is normally wilted in boiling water before being fried and combined with sautéed onions or tomato. Some (more traditionally, the Shona people) add beef, pork and other meat to the umbhida mix for a type of stew.[29] Most people eat umbhida on a regular basis in Zimbabwe, as it is economical and can be grown with little effort in home gardens.[30]