RIP Roland Barthes, you would have loved this recipe
(Citation needed)
This month was my dad’s birthday. Of course, it was not actually his birthday, it hasn’t been his birthday for over five years, but it remains in my calendar “dad’s birthday.” As I do every year on memorial dates, his birthday, his yahrzeit, I cook specific foods. Despite the fact that my dad was someone who liked eating many things, and liked trying even more things, I always cook from a small repertoire for these memorials.
Back at the end of August I was at a state fair ground in Norwalk, Ohio to see pro-wrestling. It was “olde” themed, with a variety of gimmicks and costumes that gestured broadly at “early 20th century.” It was also “olde” in the way that it handled its booking, and the way matches were structed. For almost all of you reading this, that means nothing, but I remember, at one point, thinking to myself “RIP to Roland Barthes, you would have loved Olde Wrestling.” It’s true! He would have! Just read his only legible piece of writing “The World of Wrestling” and you’ll see.
The thing that this thought made me reflect on was that I am very comfortable asserting “Roland Barthes would have loved Olde Wrestling” but I can’t do the same thing for my dad. My dead dad is trapped in the past, I don’t know how to bring his memory forward into the life I live now. I don’t know how to say I am eating this braised tofu, this japchae, in his memory, because these are dishes that I never ate with him.
It is easy to make generalizations about what someone I have never met would feel. To me, they exist as a character, as a figment of my imagination. Roland Barthes is not real. My dad was real, but he is not anymore. Roland Barthes is, essentially, a meme to me. Despite the ease with which I say the phrase “my dead dad,” he is not. As I move through my life, he remains a memory, but not a character. In some ways, it might be nice to make him a character. A character might be easier to introduce to other people. Instead, he is a collection of facts and memories that stay static, unchanging since November 28, 2016.
My inability to expand past experiences into my current life is one of the bigger struggles I have with writing regularly: a lot of the recipes I make now are not “my” recipes. I cook a lot of food that I didn’t grow up eating, that my dad didn’t cook when I was a kid. The recipes that I feel most comfortable with changing are those ones. I think this is partly because I don’t have to look at a recipe for them in the first place, so I never have to think about plagiarism.
One of the foods that always reminds me of my dad is collard greens. I absolutely hated the way that he made them, I thought they smelled like feet. This is not a recipe for my dad’s collard greens, but it is a recipe that brings together some of the influences that I have taken the most of in my cooking: Chinese (particularly eastern Chinese) and southern American.
This is a recipe for potatoes, sweet potatoes, whatever sort of sausage you have on hand, and collards. You might, reasonably, wonder what Chinese cooking has to do with that. One of the things that I encountered in a positive light for the first time when I started cooking and eating a lot of Chinese food is “crispy-gone-soggy” or what I call “the ol’ fry ‘n’ braise.” A lot of Chinese recipes will have you deep fry something, get it to crispy perfection, and then have it sit for a while before eventually braising it. One of my favorite late summer dishes di san xian is an exemplar of this technique.
This is not a recipe for di san xian, it’s a recipe of my own devising, because I needed to use some CSA stuff, and also a few beyond meat bratwurst that had been sitting in my freezer for… just an unfathomable amount of time.
Fried and braised potatoes, collards and sausage (with agrodolce)
Agrodolce Sauce (directly from Smitten Kitchen)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small red onion, sliced into thin half moons
1 tablespoon tomato paste
3 tablespoons granulated sugar or honey
½ cup of red wine vinegar
Make the sauce. Heat olive oil in a medium skillet over medium heat (use an oven-proof skillet if you hate dishes and want to reuse for the pork). Add the onion and salt and cook, stirring frequently, until the onion has softened and is beginning to brown, about 10 mins. Stir in the tomato paste, and once it’s fully incorporated, add the sugar and vinegar. Bring to a simmer, then reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook until the liquid has reduced and the mixture looks like a pile of jammy mauve onions sitting in a pile of syrup (some juice should be puddled around the onion pile). (This lasts in the refrigerator for about a week, I know because this was leftover from our Rosh Hashanah dinner.)
Dinner
3/4 or so of a little bag of yellow potatoes (I don’t know how else to describe it, sorry)
1 sweet potato (mediumish, or large, whatever)
1 bunch collards (mine was small, which was regrettable)
2 sausages (your choice, I used fake brats and liked it)
Garlic powder
Smoked paprika
Braising liquid: I used a mixture of water, lots of yeondu and sake. You can use anything you like, water and white wine, dry sherry, shaoshing, stock. If you just use water, probably add more seasonings.
Bring a small pot of well salted water to boil with the baby potatoes in it. Cook until done, for me this was about 14-16 minutes. Cook sweet potato (prick thoroughly, microwave for five minutes.) Prepare collards (wash and cut into squares.) Mix braising liquid. Remove casing from sausages, break them apart.
When the potatoes are done, let them cool for a few minutes while you heat a wok with about 3/4 cup of oil. (maybe less, I did not measure. It wasn’t a lot.) Slice potatoes.
Once the oil is hot (stick a chopstick in, and if the oil bubbles immediately it’s good) starting with the baby potatoes, fry. While they are frying, cut the sweet potato. Frying the potatoes is always the longest part, but it takes much less time if you boil them first! When they are fried to your liking, remove to a paper towel lined plate, then fry the sweet potatoes. Put those on top, sprinkle with a bit of salt. You don’t need to salt the baby potatoes, you boiled them in salt water.
Put the oil into whatever used oil receptacle you have. I… got a used peanut butter jar out of the trash (it was on top okay!!!!!!) and put the oil in it, before returning it to the trash. Be better than I am.
Heat the wok again, with a tablespoon or so of oil. Add the sausage, brown it, when it is browned to your liking raise the heat all the way, and add the collards. Mix everything so the collards are oily, let them fry a bit. This should get some of them a bit blackened and crispy.
Add seasonings. I used garlic powder and smoked paprika, because I like them, they were at hand, and I’m lazy. Add the braising liquid, start with about a quarter of a cup, you can add more if you need it. Put the lid down, steam the collards for a few minutes. Stir the collards and sausage, if the collards are starting to look done, add the potatoes, a bit more braising liquid, and toss well. Cook until the liquid is concentrated/gone. Taste it and see if you want to add more stuff. If you don’t, it’s done.
I served it with agrodolce on top, if you don’t feel like making some, any sort of quick pickled onion, or other pickle would probably be good. If not that, add a teaspoon or so of vinegar at the end.