I am helpless before the crumbled, buttery goodness of the Ritz cracker. Even though I have not lived below the Mason-Dixon line in 19 years, my true palate remains Southern at heart. So when I read a recipe that involves Ritz crackers used in place of bread crumbs, I can’t really resist. Especially when it is suggested by someone as distinguished as John T. Edge, head of the Southern Foodways Alliance, in the virtual pages of Gourmet. Mr. Edge recently posted a casserole variation on a Frank Stitt gratin, and its publication happened to dovetail with a couple of my other current cooking interests, namely beans and greens.
Mr. Edge’s slow downgrading of the original recipe started with canned beans, but part of my inspiration for making this dish had to do with my recent discovery of Rancho Gordo’s magical Alubia Criolla bean, which is basically a Mexican heirloom variety of a white runner bean, as perfect and creamy a white bean as you can imagine. Once I made my first batch, I was on the lookout for anything I could use them in. And along comes Mr. Edge with his beans-and-greens casserole, coinciding with the appearance at the farmers market of beautiful, peaced-out collard greens grown by the Buddhists at Green Gulch. The stars were aligned for my California-fication of Mr. Edge’s casserole-ification of Frank Stitt’s gratin.