Collard Green Fried Rice is not on the menu at Lazy Betty, chef Ron Hsu’s luxurious Michelin-starred restaurant in Midtown, where a nine-course tasting menu plus wine pairing can set you back nearly $500. But Hsu often makes it in his cozy Virginia-Highland bungalow for his wife, Jackie, and their 7-year-old daughter, Calliope. It’s a quintessential Hsu recipe, transforming a dish from his youth with Southern produce. He shares the recipe here and in his first cookbook, “Down South + East: A Chinese American Cookbook” (Abrams, $40), publishing this month.
Credit: Courtesy of Abrams
Credit: Courtesy of Abrams
What does the Lazy Betty executive chef cook at home? Ron Hsu’s new cookbook offers smart, satisfying Eastern recipes with a Southern twist.
I found Collard Green Fried Rice delicious, approachable and affordable, like many of the other recipes in the book. Others I’ve tried and loved are similarly practical yet imaginative: Kitchen Sink Fried Rice, Roast Chicken and Rice Casserole cooked with coconut milk, shiitakes and lemongrass; Five-Spice Sorghum-Glazed Carrots with Toasted Pecans; Stir-Fried Egg Noodles with Collard Greens and Eggs.
Hsu recently agreed to show me how to make Collard Green Fried Rice in his own kitchen, which is cheerfully decorated in his daughter’s Crayon art.
In the Stone Mountain house where he grew up, Hsu explained, chopped Chinese broccoli or bok choy was the leafy green of choice for fried rice. But since moving back to the South from New York, where he spent seven years at the world-renowned Le Bernardin, he’s come to appreciate the versatility and affordability of the regional option.
“Usually, collards are braised slowly with ham hocks, but I like them barely cooked for stir-fries, he said. “You get a different mouthfeel, more of a freshness.”
He poured some oil into the large well-worn skillet on the stove and cranked up the flame underneath.
“I don’t own a wok,” he confessed, laughing. “My wife won’t let me have one because she thinks it takes up too much space. You see how crowded our kitchen is already. A wok really is ideal for fried rice if you have one, but a large saute pan also works fine.”
Minutes later, we were sitting at his dining room table with our lunch before us, with a dish of his favorite brand of kimchi from P N Rice Cake House on Buford Highway on the side.
He told me how he came to love the kitchen life in the kitchens of the five Hunan Village restaurants his parents owned on the outskirts of Atlanta.
“When I was 11 or 12, I asked one of the wok cooks I called Uncle Tony — no relation — to show me how to make fried rice. I remember him telling me how there was no one way to make it — I could put whatever I liked into it. For him to frame it that way really made sense to me.”
He thought about that lesson years later, as a business student at the University of Georgia who found more fulfillment in the restaurant kitchens where he worked to pay tuition than in his classes. He realized that, just as he was free to choose ingredients for fried rice, he was free to choose what he wanted to do with his life. With his mother’s blessing, he left Georgia to enroll in culinary school in Australia.
“I’ve always thought of fried rice as the recipe that pushed my creative impetus,” he said, “I don’t want to ever feel like I’m being constricted or controlled on how I want to express myself.”
Now 44 years old, with a long list of impressive restaurant credentials to his name, he’s checked another goal off his bucket list: writing a cookbook. Hsu said he initially planned to write a book with Lazy Betty recipes. But his literary agent convinced him to share the ingredients and techniques he uses at home.
“I thought, well, I am Chinese, and I was raised in the South, and I literally have all these ingredients in my kitchen so it’s not me being disingenuous. But I also use a lot of French technique in my food, I’ve traveled the world including all through Asia and learned to cook Vietnamese, and I realized, yea, this is who I really am!”
He stuck with the everyday tools in his kitchen and the ingredients he considers instrumental to his cooking. Most are readily available anywhere except for a few items he considers worth a trip to an Asian market — such as sweet and salty dried lap cheong sausage he bakes in cornbread and mixes into a fresh field peas salad, and pandan extract that flavors his banana pudding.
While the book forgoes the daunting high-level techniques employed at Lazy Betty, the spirit of the restaurant — and its namesake — resonates throughout these pages.
He calls his late mother, Betty Hsu, the “single biggest influence” in his life. Her nickname, Lazy Betty, refers to a family joke poking fun at her relentless energy as a restaurateur and ongoing business advisor to Ron and his siblings, Howard and Anita, who run Sweet Auburn Market and Tio Lucho’s Peruvian Coastal in Poncey Highland.
His recipe for Meatloaf with Shiitake Mushrooms is a tribute to one of the go-to dishes she made to sneak vegetables into Hsu’s meals — a trick he now pulls on his daughter.
While Hsu’s recipe instructions are precise, he encourages deviation.
“I tell people if you’re following my recipes to a T, you’re not using my book the way I want you to. I think that’s the coolest thing about cooking – you can impart your own influences on the recipe,” he said. “And if you’re putting your own spin on it, you’re also sharing your own story with somebody else.”
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Collard Green Fried Rice
In “Down South + East: A Chinese American Cookbook” (Abrams, $40) Hsu says that fried rice is a good way to repurpose leftover rice. “I like to toss day-old rice with a bit of canola oil (about 1 teaspoon of oil per cup of rice) before adding it to the pan to ensure the rice breaks up and stir-fries evenly.”
Ingredients:
- 2 tablespoons canola oil
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 teaspoon minced, peeled fresh ginger
- 1 large egg
- 2 cups leftover jasmine rice or other long-grain rice, cold
- 1/3 pound collard greens, cleaned and cut into rough 1-inch pieces (about 1 ½ cups loosely packed)
- 2 tablespoons Shaoxing cooking wine or sweet sherry
- 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
- Salt
- White pepper
Instructions:
- In a wok or large saute pan over medium-high heat, heat the canola oil. Add the garlic and ginger and stir constantly to infuse them into the oil until they are lightly browned, about 15 seconds.
- Crack the egg into the pan and quickly scramble for about 10 seconds, until the curds just begin to form, then add the rice and stir, gently smashing the rice so that any clumps are broken up. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, for another 2 minutes, or until the egg is almost cooked through but is still moist.
- Add the collard greens, wine, and sesame oil and cook for another minute, or until the greens are wilted. Season with salt and white pepper and serve immediately.
Serves 1 to 2 as a small entrée or side.
Recipe reprinted with permission from “Down South+East: A Chinese American Cookbook” by Ron Hsu with Hugh Amano, foreword by Eric Ripert (Abrams, $40.)
How to make Ron Hsu’s Collard Green Fried Rice step-by-step:
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
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