Collard and black-eyed pea dumplings with pepper jack
The very act of cooking dinner in the evening can be an expression of your artistry! And you’re sustaining your family! Double plus bonus points!! This weekend at work I didn’t make very much money, but I was allowed to take home some leftover cubes of pepper jack cheese. Score! And we got some collards from the farm. I’ve been dreaming about making some sort of savory pastry – crunchy outside, soft and warm inside, with lots of melting cheese (it’s started to get very cold here!). I love secret melted cheese! So I decided to make a cornbread crust, and inside have a layer of collards and black-eyed peas surrounding a big soft melty bit of spicy cheese. I thought these were so delicious, I was quite proud of them, and gobbled them up. They were fun to make, too. And as David pointed out – black-eyed peas and collards are both considered lucky foods!
Here’s a song David discovered that’s been stuck in my head (in a good way) ever since he played it for me. I find it quite moving! It’s Neneh Cherry and the Thing with Dream Baby Dream.
CRUST
1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup corn meal
1 t salt
1 t baking powder
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 – 1 cup warm water
Combine the flour, cornmeal, salt and baking powder in a big bowl. Pour in the olive oil, and work it in with your fingers until it’s like coarse, sandy crumbs. Add enough water to form it into a workable dough – 1/2 to 3/4 cup should do it. Knead for a few minutes, and then set aside while you make your filling.
FILLING
1 can (15 oz) black-eyed peas, rinsed and drained (or 1 1/2 cups cooked)
1 medium-sized bunch collard greens(about 1 1/2 cups cooked)
2 T olive oil
1 shallot – minced
1 clove garlic – minced
1 t oregano
1 t smoked paprika
salt and plenty of black pepper
8 – 10 1-inch cubes of pepper jack cheese
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Rinse the collard leaves, and remove their spiny stems. Drop them into the boiling water and leave them for about half an hour, till they’re quite soft. Remove and drain. Chop quite fine.
Warm the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the shallot and cook a few minutes till it starts to turn brown. Add the garlic and oregano, and cook a few minutes more. Add the beans. Stir to coat with shallots, garlic and spices, and cook for a few minutes. Then add the collards and paprika. If the pan is very dry, add a few tablespoons of water. Cook till everything is warmed and combined, season with salt and pepper, and remove from the heat.
When you’re ready to cook, preheat the oven to 400, and lightly butter a baking sheet. Break off a piece of dough about the size of a golf ball. On a lightly-floured counter, roll it to be about 1/8th inch thick and 5 inches wide. Put this circle of dough on your hand. Place a large tablespoonful of beans and greens in the center. Bury a cube of cheese in the beans and greens. Fold up the edges of the dough all around the filling, and press lightly to seal. Place seam-side down on the baking sheet. If the dough tears, patch it with an extra piece and make it a little thicker next time you roll it. Bake for 25 – 30 minutes, until the tops of the dumplings starts to turn golden brown.
Out of the Ordinary 
Never had collard greens, but I like black eyed peas. I will really try to make these, as I am also a fan of hidden melted cheese!
Jeannie – I think you’d like collards. They’re flavorful but less assertive than kale. I can’t get enough of them lately! You could always use spinach instead, though.
Thanks so much for the super-8 viewer! It’s super-cool! It’s actually quite rare to find super 8 rather than just regular 8 – I can actually use this one.
So glad you like it. I often see things at the flea market that I would like to send to you, like sour sop, or jack fruit or dragon fruit, but I don’t think they will arrive in good condition. Hoping you can come visit sometime soon. You would love the produce section of the flea market.
The poet Wallace Stevens was the head of the surety bond department at the Hartford Insurance company and I’ve heard that the composer Charles Ives also worked in insurance. (Hey, I worked in insurance too!)
My mother’s cousin Charles worked for the post office. He worked nights sorting mail and at one time worked on the mail train between St. Paul, Minnesota and Seattle-Portland. He was an artist who did wonderful impressionist paintings as well as kitschy commercial art and greeting cards. He was a fabulous musician and had a Bosendoerfer piano. He loved trains and model railroads and excavated a tunnel in his basement and set up a really neat layout for his trains to run in and out.
I love Wallace Stevens!
I like the story about your mother’s cousin, too. He sounds like a good subject for a movie!
William Carlos Williams – doctor
Herman Melville – something, but can’t remember what
Henry David Thoreau – worked in a pencil factory most of his life
Lots of college professors.
Spike Lee – directs commercials.
There are a lot more, if i can think of them.
I didn’t know Thoreau worked in a pencil factory! Good heavens.
I think his family owned it, fwiw.
Charles Bukowski worked as a letter filing clerk for the post office in Los Angeles.
Aha! A mailman! (sort of)
I can only think of Nathaniel Hawthorne (author of The Scarlet Letter) who worked in a Massachusetts customs house. D.H. Lawrence was working as a teacher when his first novel (The White Peacock) was published.
Interesting about Hawthorne. I have to admit I’m not a huge fan of Lawrence – he’s one of those who seem to claim super-sensitive status. I could be wrong though, I haven’t read him in a while.
Philip Larkin, who refused the Poet Laureateship, held his job as librarian at Hull University.
Primo Levi, author of the world famous If This Is A Man, also held his job as a chemist in a Turin paint factory.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was appointed American Consul to LIverpool after the publication of Tanglewood Tales.
Sir Peter Blake, prominent pop artist and designer of the sleeve of The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, worked as a lecturer in the Royal College Of Art. Taught Ian Dury.
It’s more difficult for musicians to hold down a job because they have to tour.
Grrr..I’ve responded to this twice and it’s gotten lost both times! I give up!
Hope my info was useful.
Hi Steenbeck, sorry for never dropping in here. I should because it’s a wonderful looking blog – but I’m short of time these days.
IRRC, Sonic Youth often worked in temporary jobs between touring and recording. And I’ll go slightly off topic now and point out that Jenny Wilson recorded “Love and Youth” as an unemployed single mother with financial support from the Swedish Council of Cultural Affairs. And over in Finland, Burning Hearts “Extinctions” was recorded with financial support from Svenska Kulturfonden. Without that aid both artists would have been forced to go to work to before they had the money to record their music. As it is, both artists are now repaying the faith of those institutions with a fair amount of commercial and financial success.
A lot of people over here hold down regular jobs while being involved in some sort of art project that they expect little or no financial return from. Tomorrow I’ll go to work at the same office as the guest vocalist on Jori Hulkkonen as Third Culture – “Options” feat Harri Falck.
Cheerio
Fuel
Hello, Fuel! Hope you’re well. Support for the arts would be a wonderful thing. Sigh.
I’m well. Hope you are. Looking at the food I’m sure you are.
Support for the arts! I know. Just imagine Burning Hearts made an obscure pop album themed around the relationship of human beings to the natural world. If only more people had such opportunities.
BTW. I was listening to Cats on Fire (Finland’s Smiths) today and I remembered the comments of fans who’d gone to check out the band only to find themselves watching their chemistry teacher and music teacher. Check out the comments in the video.
Franz Kafka worked in an insurance company most of his life. I’m sure there are many other examples, thinking now…
Of course, with indie bands and musicians, a day job is very much the norm. Laura Veirs, just to name one… you could have her giving you guitar and banjo lessons for not a lot of money if you were living in her area (at least, until a couple years ago, that I know). The Wrens’ bandmembers used to work in advertising (Charlie Bissell, later into guitar teaching too… bit of a pattern there), pharma companies, financial services enterprises, and so on…
Franz Kafka is a good example. And I actually have friends who are musicians who work in pharma companies! I guess they’re good with the equipment in the audio-visual department.
All the members of Hearts Under Fire (…yes, RR regulars, here we go again…) work in ordinary jobs. Guitarist Nicky Day and drummer Lexi Clarke have office jobs. At the moment the band are booking their holiday days on Mondays and Fridays and using the long weekends to tour the UK. During the week, they’re working 9-5 and then going to Lexi’s place to write music (they’ve had several all-night drinking/writing sessions over the past few weeks).
The Russian composer Borodin was a physician and chemistry professor and only composed Prince Igor in his spare time. I think Rimsky Korsakov had to help him with some of the orchestration.
I remember cutting and pasting this from an article a couple of years ago:
I think *sigh* is the only response.
But I want to do exactly as I please with my designs – not have them watered down by group think … so that means I have a job that goes under the title of ‘I.T. Hygienist’ (I believe that means cleaning machines) along with my job title of designer/scibbler/printer/photographer/clown.
My old take home pay (when I didn’t have responsibilities) was more in a day than I make in two weeks now and I ended up with nothing to show for it.
Weird how the world turns, composer Philip Glass wasn’t able to quit his jobs as a plumber and a taxi-driver until the age of 41. I wonder if I ever will.
41! I’ve missed it! I don’t mind working, it’s just when you work and you’re still not getting by that it hurts. Meh!
“Joy Division’s Ian Curtis worked in an unemployment office until 1979, well after the band had released their debut EP” I find that sentence quite satisfying for some strange reason.
I’ve missed the boat with 41 too – but we’ll do it Claire – and we’ll do it our way.
Hi Steenbeck
Chekhov was a doctor. Mark Twain was a typesetter. Charles Dickens worked in a blacking factory.
Of course! Charles Dickens! Perfect.
Just remembered James Hogg – The Ettrick Shepherd. He spent most of his life tending sheep and writing poetry before he was published and became famous. I think there were others like him. Watching the sheep grazing, the skylarks flying about and the sun on the uplands must have been just the right sort of occupation.
Pedantically, didn’t Dickens work in the blacking factory before he became a writer, rather than holding down the job at the same time as writing?
Quite right, Aba. Foiled again.
I’m trying to respond to every comment, but my computer is getting all fussy, and they keep disappearing. Thanks for the great suggestions, everyone! It’s very encouraging, I think!
Was going to mention Kafka as an obvious one; I think T.S.Eliot worked in a bank for a while as well. Partly depends (a) on how you define “normal” and (b) on how far removed the job needs to be from the creative activity. One of my favourite writers, W.G.Sebald, kept up the day job as a professor of German at the University of East Anglia while writing deeply sad and haunting books, but that’s not such a contrast – though more so than being a teacher of creative writing as many modern poets and novelists become.
Actually this was always my Plan B, if the academic career hadn’t worked out: get a relatively mundane job that wouldn’t deplete my creative energies, and get on with music and writing. The problem with academia is that it does need lots of creativity, but without being as wholly satisfying as – I imagine – writing a novel would be…
Another poet:
Farm labourer
Flax dresser
Farmer
Excise man
Robert Burns
Alfred Wallis
Cornish fisherman painter
Two Boats
Henri ‘Le Douanier’ Rousseau
Another excise man
Jack Russell
English cricketer/painter
Philip Jeays
Brel the bookie
Hence, Racing Days
And
Robb Johnson
Is a primary school teacher with 30 plus albums to his name
Hence – 6B Go Swimming
Guy Evans is the drummer for Van Der Graaf Generator and teaches music technology at a 6th form college in London, so VDGG only tour in the school holidays
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