Carla Hall’s Callaloo Collard Greens

Carla Hall’s grandmother Freddie Mai Glover cooked collard greens only one way. “She added pork and simmered them a really long time,” says Hall, a Nashville native who cohosts The Chew on ABC and runs Carla Hall’s Southern Kitchen in Brooklyn. Now that Hall has added consulting chef for the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture to her résumé, she’s been expanding her knowledge of African American—and African—cooking. Which inspired this pot of greens seasoned with thyme, coconut, and chile in the style of Caribbean and West African callaloo, a dish of stewed amaranth greens that’s kin to her grandmother’s collards. “I never want my food to be gratuitously different,” Hall says. “If somebody from Jamaica or West Africa has these, they’ll taste familiar. If a Southerner eats them, they’ll still taste familiar.” Oh, and resist the urge to cut out the stems. “Not only do the stems give you good texture,” she says, “but they also look cool.”