The Cornbread Gospels (23 page)
Read The Cornbread Gospels Online
Authors: Crescent Dragonwagon
1 batch Lemon Glaze (
recipe follows
)
1.
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Spray 16 muffin-tin cups with oil.
2.
Prepare the ginger by pulse-chopping it very fine in a food processor, pausing to scrape down the sides of the work bowl. Place it in a small skillet, adding ¼ cup of the sugar and the teaspoon of corn syrup, if using. Put the skillet over medium heat and, keeping a close eye on it and giving the pan an occasional shake, cook just until the sugar has melted, about 6 minutes. The mixture will be quite hot. Remove from the heat and let it cool.
3.
Sift the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and the remaining ¼ cup sugar into a large bowl. Stir in the oatmeal.
4.
Whisk together the butter, eggs, lemon zest, and buttermilk in a small bowl.
5.
Combine the wet and dry mixtures with a few preliminary strokes, then add the prepared ginger and the diced pears. Stir just a few more times, until the ingredients are barely combined.
6.
Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups and bake until golden and crusty, 15 minutes. Let the muffins cool briefly, then pour the lemon glaze over them (it is quite thin and sticky and will be well absorbed by the muffins, making for extra-moist, very lemony muffins that will have you licking your fingers).
EMON
G
LAZE
E
NOUGH FOR
16
MUFFINS
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon, preferably organic
⅓ cup fresh lemon juice
⅓ cup sugar
Combine all ingredients in a small pan and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Lower the heat and simmer the glaze until slightly thickened, 4 to 5 minutes. Let cool slightly, and use as directed above.
It was upon a Lammas night,
When corn rigs are bonny,
Beneath the moon’s unclouded light,
I held awhile to Annie;
The time flew by, with tentless heed,
Till, ’tween the late and early,
With small persuasion she agreed
To see me through the barley.
Corn rigs, an’ barley rigs,
An’ corn rigs are bonny:
I’ll ne’er forget that happy night,
Among the rigs with Annie.
—R
OBERT
B
URNS
,
“C
ORN
R
IGS AN
’ B
ARLEY
R
IGS
,” 1783
LUE
, B
LUE
B
LUEBERRY
C
ORN
M
UFFINS
M
AKES
18
STANDARD MUFFINS OR
12
LARGE MUFFINS
Almost everyone’s first and favorite muffin is blueberry. Here are a few twists. Cornmeal adds its ever-pleasing gritty crunchiness, and what cornmeal-loving cook could resist blue cornmeal with blueberries? You can make these with frozen blues (unthawed), but I recommend fresh—to me, blueberry muffins are one of the best wait-for-the-season foods. Since they’re so very juicy, you might use muffin papers in the tins instead of oiling the tins. Your call (and cleanup).
Blue cornmeal is available at natural foods stores, or online. If you want to take these over the top, serve them with the Blueberry–Cream Cheese–Honey Butter that follows.
Vegetable oil cooking spray or muffin papers
1⅔ cups unbleached white flour, divided
⅓ cup stone-ground blue cornmeal (see Pantry,
page 350
)
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
⅓ cup butter, at room temperature
½ cup sugar
1 egg
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 cup low-fat milk, plain or vanilla soy milk, or a combination (see
Note
)
1 cup blueberries
½ cup chopped toasted walnuts (optional)
Blueberry–Cream Cheese–Honey Butter, for serving (optional;
recipe follows
)
1.
Preheat the oven to 425°F. Spray 18 standard-size or 12 large muffin-tin cups with oil, or line the cups with papers.
2.
Stir together the flour, blue cornmeal, salt, baking powder, and baking soda into a large bowl. Set aside.
3.
Cream together the butter and sugar in a small bowl, then beat in the egg, vanilla, and nutmeg.
4.
Stir the creamed mixture into the dry mixture along with the milk, until not quite blended. Then add the blueberries and the walnuts, if using, with just a couple of strokes, so the mixture is just barely combined. Spoon into the prepared muffin cups.
5.
Bake until the edges of the muffins are
golden brown and the caps are rounded and also golden, 22 to 27 minutes. Let cool for just a few minutes, then remove from the cups. Serve warm (or rewarm before eating them), with blueberry–cream cheese–honey butter if you like.
N
OTE
:
Why the suggestion of combining low-fat dairy milk and soy milk? Because soy milk has a genuinely rich, cream-like texture. Combine it with low-fat milk for dairy flavor with cream texture. The combination was the preference of my tasters.
ARIATION
:
B
LUEBERRY
-W
ALNUT
S
TREUSEL
M
UFFINS
Substitute brown sugar for white in the muffin batter; pass on the optional walnuts. Make the streusel topping: Cut together 2 tablespoons butter, 3 tablespoons brown sugar, 2 tablespoons unbleached white flour, and 1 tablespoon oatmeal until crumbly. Toss in ⅓ cup chopped toasted walnuts. Divide this mixture among the tops of the unbaked muffins. Bake as directed.
LUEBERRY
-C
REAM
C
HEESE
-H
ONEY
B
UTTER
A
BOUT
1½
CUPS
If you used frozen blueberries for the muffin recipe, you’ll have some left over in the bag. Use them to make this luscious spread for the muffins.
About 1 cup frozen blueberries (more or less is fine), thawed
½ cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
8 ounces Neufchâtel or low-fat cream cheese
¼ cup honey
2 teaspoons crème de cassis, Chambord, or Grand Marnier (optional)
Combine all ingredients (including any blueberry juice) in a food processor. Buzz until smooth, and transfer to a serving dish. Pop in the freezer for a few minutes as the muffins bake, so the butter will firm up just a bit. Serve with the warm blueberry muffins and you almost won’t miss the fresh blueberries.
Almost.
ARIATION
:
F
RESH
B
LUEBERRY
-C
REAM
C
HEESE
-H
ONEY
B
UTTER
Use ½ cup fresh blueberries in place of the thawed to raise the swoon factor. Serve on pancakes, waffles, or toast, or in crepes with whole fresh blueberries.
T
HE
D
AILY
G
RIND
In recipe after recipe, I call for stone-ground cornmeal. Let’s cozy up to the what and why.
Cornmeal is simply dried, ground-up, whole-kernel field corn, usually of the variety called flint or dent. It is “sweet” only in contrast to nixtamalized corn kernels (which have been soaked in an alkaline solution to make them easier to grind—as a bonus, this process also makes the corn easier to digest); the sweet corn grown for cornmeal is not sweet in the high-sugar, eat-it-fresh-off-the-cob sense.
How this “sweet” corn is ground to meal has everything to do with its nutritive value, flavor, and texture. Corn has a larger percentage of oil than wheat and many other grains; because oil easily turns rancid, corn needs greater care than wheat in grinding and milling to stay at its best.
Corn is ground in one of two ways: between slowly moving stones, to create stone-ground whole-grain cornmeal (sometimes called “water-ground,” because the grinding stones are often powered by water), or between mammoth steel rollers, the industrial milling method. These steel rollers get extremely hot, destroying much of the corn’s flavor and nutritive value by partially cooking it. The meal created by this method has its germ and hull removed, thus becoming the pitiful commercial product known as “enriched-degerminated cornmeal.” Dry, uniform in texture, it’s virtually flavorless.
Does this mass-produced cornmeal have anything going for it? Sure. It’s cheap, you can buy it almost anywhere, and it almost never spoils. Its shelf life is indefinite; due to the processing, there’s nothing left in it to spoil.
Stone-grinding in a small, usually
water-powered mill produces a better, tastier, and more nutritious meal, with unmistakable, wonderful texture. Because it is a precise and painstaking process, the corn is necessarily ground in small quantities, under the watchful eye of a miller (or “milleress,” as Zoë Caywood, doyenne of the famous War Eagle Mill in Rogers, Arkansas, proudly refers to herself). The miller(ess) shapes the final result at every step, from the corn varieties purchased, to the grinding method, to how, where, and to whom the meal is marketed.
Such mills steward whole-grain meal: the flavorful germ is left in, as is the healthful and wonderfully textured outer part, the bran. Then there’s a tiny dark dot at the heart of whole-grain corn’s germ, sometimes called the speckle or freckle. When the germ is ground, the result is sometimes called “speckle-heart” cornmeal. Some aficionados claim the freckle holds most of the flavor.
Unlike steel rollers, stone grinding wheels do not heat up. Barely warm even at peak use, they ensure that the cornmeal loses neither taste nor nutritive value. The result: flavorful, textural cornmeal, full of the tastes that the spectrum of nutritional elements have given it; and of slightly irregularly sized particles, some floury, some the size of fine sand, some a full yellow, some a creamier yellow, with tiny freckles visible if you hold a bit in your hand. This grainy texture gives cornbread and other baked goods made from whole-grain, stone-ground corn their magical, distinctive, toothsome crunch and grit.
Drawbacks? Well, in some parts of America stone-ground cornmeal is hard to find, other than by mail order. Because it’s more labor-intensive, it’s more expensive. Too, stone-ground cornmeal doesn’t keep for long and it’s more prone to insect infestation. To those who love good food, these drawbacks are trifling.
RUMBLE
-B
UMBLE
L
EMON
B
LUEBERRY
B
ABYCAKES
M
AKES
12
BABYCAKES
These are rich, sweet, and very cake-like. Hence, “babycakes”—what else would you call the ultimate in a conventional-but-with-a-twist muffin that is a simply scrumptious, not-for-every-day treat? Save these for fresh blueberries. If you add the optional streusel topping, you are at serious risk of lily-gilding. Sweet enough to be dessert, the batter would be excellent baked in a cake pan, served warm and sprinkled with a little confectioners’ sugar, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt.
Note that these rise a good bit, making an extra-crunchy, larger-than-normal top that flows onto the upper surface of the muffin tin. So, be sure to oil that surface as well.
Vegetable oil cooking spray
⅓ cup butter, at room temperature
¾ cup sugar, preferably unrefined (see Pantry,
page 356
)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Finely grated zest of 1 to 2 lemons, preferably organic
1¼ cups unbleached white flour
¼ cup whole wheat pastry flour
¼ cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ cup milk (I prefer vanilla soy milk here)
1½ to 2 cups fresh blueberries
½ cup chopped walnuts, toasted or not
Rich Cinnamon-Nut Crumble-Bumble Streusel (optional;
recipe follows
)
1.
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Spray a 12-cup muffin tin with oil or line the cups with papers. In either case, be sure to spray the top surface of the muffin tin.
2.
Cream the butter and sugar in a medium bowl until thoroughly incorporated, then beat in the eggs, one at a time. Add the vanilla and lemon zest.
3.
Stir together the flours, cornmeal, salt, and baking powder in a large bowl (you may sift these if you want an even lighter muffin). Set aside.
4.
Stir the creamed mixture into the flour mixture, alternating with the milk. Don’t overbeat. The moment the mixtures are mostly combined, stir in the blueberries and nuts with a few quick strokes.