• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Serve these beans with Pimento-Cheese Potato Gratin and Skirt Steak with Parsley Sauce, and you have a well-rounded, knockout menu that takes only an hour to prepare.

1 large navel orange

2 teaspoons canola oil

1 pound green beans, ends trimmed

¾ teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar, champagne vinegar, or rice vinegar

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Freshly ground black pepper

1 Finely grate the zest of the orange, and reserve it. Segment the orange (see Segmenting Citrus), and keep the sections and juice in a bowl.

2 In a large cast-iron skillet or sauté pan, heat the canola oil over high heat, swirling it around the pan so it coats the bottom thinly and evenly. When the oil begins to smoke, add the beans (in batches, if necessary—don’t crowd the pan) and scatter ½ teaspoon of the salt over them. Cook, stirring only every 1½ to 2 minutes, until the beans are half blistered and blackened, about 8 minutes. Transfer the beans to a serving platter or bowl. Lift the orange segments out of their juice (reserve the juice), and scatter them over the beans. Sprinkle ¼ teaspoon of the orange zest over the beans and oranges.

3 Add the vinegar, olive oil, and remaining ¼ teaspoon salt to the bowl of orange juice, and whisk until thoroughly combined. Pour the dressing over the beans. Toss, and season to taste with salt, black pepper, and the remaining orange zest.

garnish it rich

•••

With pieces of Buttermilk Fresh Cheese crumbled over the beans just before serving.

SPINACH WITH COLLARDS SEASONING

serves 4 • TIME: 5 minutes preparation, 15 minutes cooking

As much as we love sturdy greens like collard, mustard, and turnip, they take a while to wash and de-rib and chop. And even if you like them al dente, as we do, they take longer to cook than fresh spinach. This is a recipe that takes all the seasonings we love in our recipes for sturdy greens—smoked bacon, vinegar, crushed red pepper, and a smidgen of sugar—and transposes them to fresh spinach, a vegetable that takes considerably less time to clean, trim, and cook. Don’t get us wrong: we love our collards, but sometimes you need a dish in the arsenal that hits all the pleasure points collards do but takes only 20 minutes to make.

2 ounces slab bacon, or 2 strips thick-cut bacon, finely diced

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar or red wine vinegar

½ teaspoon crushed dried red chile flakes

½ teaspoon kosher salt

¼ teaspoon sugar

1¼ pounds fresh spinach, stems trimmed

Scatter the bacon in a skillet set over medium-high heat and cook, stirring, until just browned, about 4 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons water and the vinegar, chile flakes, salt, and sugar. Simmer until slightly reduced, about 1 minute. Add the spinach by handfuls, tossing the leaves in the skillet and adding more as they wilt, until all the spinach has wilted, about 4 minutes. Serve immediately.

LEMON-GLAZED SWEET POTATOES

serves 4 • TIME: 5 minutes preparation, 50 minutes cooking

In Van Zandt County, Texas, sweet potatoes have been the king commodity for nearly fifty years. We journeyed to the heart of the county, about 50 miles east of Dallas, to interview a sweet-potato farming family—Dale Smith, his wife, Roma, and their son, Sheb—and we got a seed-to-market perspective on raising these curious orange torpedoes. Among other interesting facts, we learned that sweet potato vines can be cut into short segments and replanted, and that the wild hogs in east Texas wreak so much havoc on the crop, tearing up the sandy soil to get to the nutritious tubers, that if you bring the ears of a hog you’ve killed to the county extension agent, he’ll give you $7 cash.

When we returned from touring the fields, Roma offered us inch-thick slices of roasted sweet potato from a platter. They were naked—no salt, no nothing—and had just come from the oven. She explained that when she was a child, her mother had served these to her and her siblings as an afternoon snack. The disks were as delicious as candy—though not nearly as