THE CHEF: ROBERT STEHLING; A Dash of Steakhouse in a Down-Home Dish

New York Times, July 20, 2005 | By MATT LEE and TED LEE (NYT)

''WHEN I came to Charleston in 1996, I had all these purist ideas about Southern cooking,'' Robert Stehling said as he stripped collard leaves from their ribs at his home here. ''I was going to cram it down their throats: in-your-face Southern.''

This take-no-prisoners approach at his restaurant, the Hominy Grill, frightened off more than a few early customers, many of them locals, the very people he had hoped to thrill. ''They didn't want to eat what their parents ate,'' he said. ''They wanted to be more sophisticated and worldly.''

And tourists, if interested in local food at all, seemed to prefer a less challenging introduction to Southern cuisine than liver pudding and stewed okra. But in the ensuing nine years, Mr. Stehling found a way to balance his customers' various expectations of what Southern food should be with his own.

On a sweltering June afternoon he was preparing creamed collards, a sly modulation of the Southern culinary canon that is typical of his style. In his hands a vegetable like collard greens, grown dull by repetition, can appear in an entirely new light, without offending the spirit of the dish.

Last fall he was looking for a vegetable to serve with a T-bone to the kind of customer who orders steak and potatoes out of habit.

''I wanted to stay familiar to the traditions of a steakhouse, but to use the Southern ingredients I had in hand,'' he said. ''Creamed collards was one of those ideas that hit me, like a fried green tomato B.L.T.''

The creamed collard idea, like the updated B.L.T. before it, has become popular, not just alongside the steak but with another signature dish, a toasty, sesame-crusted catfish. Sesame -- benne in the Bantu dialect -- was brought to America by enslaved West Africans. Now it is most often employed by Charlestonians in sweet contexts, especially cookies and candies.

He fired up the heat under a large pot and placed in it a baseball-size, mahogany-colored smoked ham hock that had been deeply scored. It sizzled and popped, and gradually released some fragrant grease, to which he added a heap of chopped onion.

''If I was at the restaurant, I'd have put a big ol' dab of bacon fat in there, too,'' Mr. Stehling said. He said that the restaurant fried enough bacon to produce about a gallon of bacon fat each day, and that cooking oils were too expensive for him to ignore the potential uses of that gallon.

Mr. Stehling was reared in Greensboro, N.C., by parents who grew most everything they ate. That farm-bred resourcefulness finds its way into his cooking.

He tossed a generous tablespoon of diced garlic into the pot. ''You can get two different flavors out of garlic, depending on whether you crush or chop it,'' he said. ''The crushed is warmer, bigger; the chopped is cleaner and more stable. I use chopped in this recipe because I want it to maintain its character all the way to the end of the long stewing time.''

He rolled the stripped collards into bunches and sliced them crosswise into ribbons. After he washed them in a colander, he added them by handfuls to the pot. ''I don't believe in sautŽing collards,'' he said, ''or doing anything other than a nice, long cook.''

He resisted adding any broth or water just yet, preferring to let the leaves wilt in the bottom of the pot for several minutes with the oil, the hock and the softened onion, which had turned a golden brown.

When the greens were mostly wilted, he added about three cups of chicken stock, which did not quite cover them. Mr. Stehling was an art student at the University of North Carolina when he took a job washing dishes at Crook's Corner, a restaurant in Chapel Hill founded in 1982 by Bill Neal. Mr. Neal's intuitive explorations of French and Southern food left their mark on more than one generation of aspiring Southern chefs (he died in 1991), and Mr. Stehling gradually worked his way up the line to sous-chef. In 1987 he moved to New York, and he cooked for nine years in such restaurants as Arizona 206, Sarabeth's and Home before following his wife to Charleston.

He began preparing the cornmeal and sesame flour coating, or dredge, for the catfish fillets. ''I knew I wanted a pan-fried catfish when I set up the menu at Hominy, and benne seed seemed to me to be such a Charleston thing,'' he said. ''It blends nicely with cornmeal, adds a nutty flavor.''

He pulsed half of the raw, untoasted sesame seeds in a grinder and left the remainder whole, for appearance' sake. He measured out a cup of white cornmeal. ''Yellow cornmeal's basically for animals,'' he said. ''White cornmeal's what people eat.''

Working a pepper mill with elbows out, he said to season the dredge to taste, ''because that's going to be your only seasoning in the fish.''

Mr. Stehling poured about an eighth of an inch of peanut oil in a 10-inch cast-iron Griswold. ''Even though you're not deep-frying, this isn't a place to skimp on oil,'' he said. ''You can control the heat better by pan-frying; deep-frying, the fish gets blasted from all angles.''

He pressed each side of a catfish fillet in the plate of dredge, allowing the moisture of the fish to pick up a light coating. He placed the fillet in the pan, rounded side down first. ''Press it down in there pretty good,'' he said. ''That's considered the presentation side in the restaurant, and I want to ensure perfect color.''

The popcorn-like aroma of toasting cornmeal began to fill the kitchen, and Mr. Stehling peeked at the underside of the three fillets in the pan. When they had begun to turn a picture-perfect sandy brown, he flipped them to finish cooking their flat sides. When they were done, he reserved each fillet on a platter lined with a paper towel and added another set of fillets to the pan.

He turned off the collards, now soupy and dark Army green, and added two cups of cream, letting them cook at the barest simmer until all the fish had been fried.

We tasted the catfish, whose crisp crust, both salty and smoky, set off the mellow, earthy taste of the fish. The cream had given the collards a roundness and a sweetness that seemed to deepen their flavor. The greens seemed at once very familiar and like nothing we had tasted before.

''Most of my customers are from the South, and eating collards and catfish is in their blood, it's genetic,'' Mr. Stehling said, sticking a fork in the collard pot. ''But they don't want it packaged like that.''

Sesame-Crusted Catfish
Adapted from Robert Stehling
Time: 30 minutes

• 1 cup sesame seeds
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 2 teaspoons salt, more to taste
• 1/2 easpoon freshly ground black pepper, more to taste
• 1 1/4 cups peanut oil, or as needed
• 2 pounds (8 small or 4 large) catfish fillets
• 1 large lemon, cut into 8 wedges
• Tabasco sauce.

1. Heat oven to 250 degrees. Using a spice grinder or a coffee mill, grind 1/2 cup sesame seeds until finely ground but not pasty. In a wide, shallow bowl or on a plate, combine remaining 1/2 cup whole sesame seeds, ground sesame seeds, cornmeal, salt and pepper. Mix well and set aside.

2. Pour peanut oil into a 12-inch cast-iron skillet to a depth of about 1/8 inch. Place over medium heat and bring to a temperature of 365 degrees.

3. Press catfish fillets into sesame mixture so that they are evenly coated. Shake loose any excess. Working in batches, place fillets in pan rounded sides down; do not crowd pan. Allow fillets to cook until golden brown underneath, 5 to 6 minutes, then turn and brown other side, another 5 to 6 minutes. As fillets are cooked, transfer them to a baking sheet lined with paper towels, and place in oven to keep warm.

4. To serve, place equal portions of fillets on four plates, and garnish each plate with lemon wedges and a few drops of Tabasco sauce.

Yield: 4 servings.

Creamed Collard Greens
Adapted from Robert Stehling
Time: About 3 hours

• 2 3/4 pounds collard greens, trimmed of stems and coarse ribs removed
• 1 smoked ham hock, well-scored on all sides
• 1 teaspoon vegetable or olive oil
• 1 1/2 cups diced yellow onion
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes
• 4 cups chicken stock or canned broth, more as needed
• 2 cups heavy cream
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper.

1. Wash collard greens and cut crosswise into ribbons 1/3. inch wide. Set aside but do not dry.

2. Place ham hock and oil in a heavy 4-quart pot over medium-high heat. Sear hock, turning it as it browns and renders some fat. Add onion and sautŽ until golden brown, about 8 minutes. Reduce heat to medium and add garlic, stirring for about 30 seconds. Add collard greens a few handfuls at a time, adding more as they wilt.

3. When greens have wilted, add hot pepper flakes and just enough chicken stock to cover greens; reserve remainder to add during cooking. Bring stock to a simmer, reduce heat to low, and simmer until greens are tender, 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Check greens occasionally to make sure pot does not become dry, adding more stock as necessary. (Toward end of cooking there should be just enough liquid to cover bottom of pan.)

4. Add heavy cream and continue cooking until greens are very soft, 15 to 20 minutes. Discard ham hock and season greens with salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot.

Yield: 4 servings.