Collards with Ham and Purple Corn Dumplings

Few things are more "American" than collards with corn bread and pork. This recipe combines all three in a one-pot meal.  

First I picked up the collards from the City Farm booth at the farmer's market.  City Farm is a 3/4 acre urban farm in South Providence that produced over 1,500 pounds of food last year.  I sliced and blanched the collards, and then stewed them for about half an hour with a piece of ham (the recipe called for 1 1/2 hours - way too long, even for collards!).  The dumplings are made of blue cornmeal (my own twist - the recipe called for white), salt, hot water and butter rolled up into little balls and dropped onto the boiling collards to cook, covered, for another half hour.  I served these up with chopped ham and have to say that they all complemented each other quite well.  The greens and the blue corn were both a bit bitter in their own ways, so if I were to make this again, I'd go ahead and use the white cornmeal as recommended by the recipe.