Family Recipe: Pressure Cooker Collard Greens

Here's a recipe I modified from a great original vegetarian recipe. You could easily make it vegetarian again by taking out the meat, and it will still have a decent flavor. I don't have exact measurements, since the proportions are totally based on the size of the pressure cooker.

The great advantage to the pressure cooker is that the greens takes less than an hour to cook, as opposed to the traditional method, which can take all day. Also, collard greens have a bad reputation as the smelliest green. While they're cooking, they give off an unpleasant liver-like smell, but once they're done, they taste divine. Cooking collard greens in a pressure cooker greatly reduces the amount of time that they give off this unpleasant smell.

I've gotten a lot of compliments on this dish!

Ingredients
- a large amount of collard greens. Rule of thumb: they should look like twice the volume of your pressure cooker.
- canned or cartoned tomato chunks. Rule of thumb: including liquid, they should be a quarter of the volume of your pressure cooker
- two onions
- six cloves of garlic
- malt vinegar (European or Chinese, doesn't matter)
- liquid smoke
- 1-2 ham hocks
- bacon
- black pepper
- chili powder (not too hot... I recommend ancho chile powder, not cayenne)
- salt
- molasses and/or maple sugar

Directions
1. First, you need to cook down the collard greens in order to get them to fit in the pressure cooker. This may need to be done in batches, or in more than one frying pan. In a large frying pan or wok, cut and fry bacon, onions and garlic so that the onions and garlic cook a little bit in the bacon fat, just enought to turn translucent
2. Add the collard green pieces, salt, chili powder and black pepper, and cook them down a bit over medium heat, stirring vigorously. The greens should reduce in volume after 10-15 minutes. If you need more oil add some olive oil or vegetable oil.
3. Put the tomato chunks in the pressure cooker with the ham hock(s). Add the collard green mix from the frying pan. Put more spices if you want. Add about three tablespoons of malt vinegar, one teaspoon of liquid smoke and a quarter cup of something very sweet and flavorful like molasses or maple syrup.
4. Cook for 30 minutes at a high pressure setting.
5. Release pressure by running cold water on pressure cooker. Check greens for doneness. If not done, cook 5-10 minutes more. Repeat if necessary.
6. When you determine they are cooked to tenderness, take them off. Discard the ham hock from the bottom of the pot. Eat the greens or store in fridge. They will only taste better next day.