This recipe was one of the five meals my mom had in her heavy weeknight rotation to feed our family of six.
Whenever I can succesfully marry my love for Asian BBQ with my favorite Southern ingredients, I know I've made something special. The marinade for this beef was inspired by the popular Korean bulgogi sauce, and the collards are a true Southern icon. The history of collard greens begins with the African roots of the slaves in the colonial South, and the need to feed families with a hearty and nutritious green that was easy to farm, but it has grown into a tradition of abundance, celebration, and comfort. And here the collards seem right at home in a simple but satisfying rice bowl.
This is the main course of choice for my New Year's Eve dinners because it's got everything going for it in the party-food department. It's wonderfully satisfying, elegant, universally appreciated (among carnivores, of course), expandable -- you can make it for twenty as easily as you can for two -- and ninety percent do-aheadable, so you need to be away from the action for only a few minutes just before serving.
Meat loaf is one of those dishes that can take on so much, like vegetables, leftover mashed potatoes, the end of a bottle of wine from the weekend, a bit of stale bread.
This, I hasten to say, is my personal version of stifado, to which several of my Greek friends gently object.
This meat loaf started life as a meatball recipe in the Times.
Honey gives this recipe its edge. Once the steak is cooked, you taste only the barest hint of sweetness, yet the sugar opens up all the meat's bold beefiness. Each mouthful delivers fabulous crustiness and a hum of black pepper.