The last page of the folder is the plainest one in the whole stack. No stain where a pot sat, no torn corner, no drawing of a wing or a fin pressed into the paper with hard ink. Just one word dead center, written small and careful the way a man writes when he’s taken his time, and under it a long dark smudge like a thumb dragged through soot, or like something oily that got pressed in and then rubbed away until it was only a shadow. That word, smaller than any other in the whole book, is the name of the thing Amos kept for last.
Amos’s note in the margin, up the side in pencil, lighter than anything else in the folder because he wrote it late or slow: “a man that can read the woods keeps eatin when the money’s gone. this here aint a meal you buy. its one you walk out and pick, and it’ll pull the winter right out of yor bones.”
Recipe No. 17: Poke Sallet
The Greens
Poke grows where the ground has been broke open, along fence rows and under the edge of the woods, and you pick it in the spring when the shoots are young and tender, no taller than knee-high and before the stalks turn red and the berries come on. Amos’s rule was simple, and he wrote it twice, like a man who had once been made sick by making it wrong: gather only the young shoots, and always boil the poison out before you ever think of eating it. The younger shoots he called the only kind worth fooling with; the rest he said to leave for the birds, because the birds are the only ones too simple to care when it’s gone red.
- Pick only young poke shoots in the spring, knee-high at the most, before the stalk goes red or the berries set
- Wash them and cut away any stalk that is woody or stained
- Boil them in clean water, then pour that water off and boil them again in fresh water
- Do it twice, every time, with no shortcuts. The first water carries out the poison and you never keep it.
The boiling is not fuss and it is not optional. Pokeweed is a wild green that will sicken a careless man, and Amos treated the double boil the way a rifleman treats the safety. You do it the same way every single time, even when you’re tired and hungry and the pot is already hot, because the one time you skip it is the time it gets you.
Amos’s second note, under the single word and close to the smudge: “boil it twice or bury me, there aint no third way. my mother learned me that and she near had to learn it twice on account of my father.”
Cooking It
After the second boil you drain the greens, and then you fry them the only way that makes them worth eating. A little bacon fat in a skillet, the greens pressed in still wet, and let them wilt down with a little salt and a splash of vinegar if there’s any in the house. If you’ve got a few scrambled eggs and a piece of cold cornbread, that’s the whole meal, and in early spring when the store-bought food was low and the garden wasn’t up yet, it was the meal that got a family to planting time.
- After the second boil, drain the poke well and press out the extra water
- Heat bacon fat in a flat skillet and lay the greens in still a little wet
- Add salt, and let them wilt and fry until the stems are tender and the edges just barely crisp
- Serve with a splash of vinegar, scrambled eggs, and cornbread if you’ve got it
It tastes green and slightly bitter and a little smoky from the bacon fat, a spring taste that’s hard to describe to anybody who’s spent their whole life buying greens in a bag. It was never anybody’s favorite meal in that house, I don’t expect, but it was the first green thing after a long gray winter, and when a man has been eating salt pork and dried beans for three months, a mouthful of fresh boiled green he walked out and picked for free is close enough to a feast.
What It Actually Tastes Like
Poke sallet is bitter the way a lot of honest wild greens are bitter, and the double boil tames most of the worst of it while leaving enough to let you know you’re eating something that grew, not something that shipped. Fried in bacon fat with a little vinegar it turns savory and alive, and it’s the kind of thing a man who didn’t grow up eating it has to approach a couple times before he decides he likes it. The ones who did grow up on it will tell you it’s a spring tonic, a thing that wakes the body up after a winter of too much salt and too little sun.
Practical Notes
- Get your poke identification dead right before you pick a single shoot. Know the plant in every stage, because a mistake with wild greens is not a matter of flavor.
- Young shoots only, before the stalk goes red and the berries set. Once it’s red, leave it for the birds.
- Boil twice, pour off the water both times, and never save or drink that water. This is the whole skill, and it is not negotiable.
- If you’re not certain you can identify the plant with full confidence, buy your greens. A free meal is never cheap enough to gamble your health on.
Amos’s last note on the page, written in pencil under the smudge and so faint you almost miss it, the last words in the whole folder: “this here’s the last one. flop the book shut and go eat. a man that reads about food while he’s hungry aint got the sense the good Lord give a crawdad.”
And that’s the folder, all seventeen pages. Seventeen meals a poor Ozark man fed his family out of the woods and the creek and the edge of a hard-broke field, written down in the kind of ink and pencil that cost more than some of the meat. I’m not sure he ever meant for anybody outside the family to read it. I’m glad it ended up in my hands, and I’m glad I could pass the pages along one at a time. He’d probably laugh at me for making such a thing out of a poke weed and a catfish, and then he’d pour himself a cup of coffee and tell me to shut the book and go eat.
