The Cornbread Gospels (32 page)
Read The Cornbread Gospels Online
Authors: Crescent Dragonwagon
In the South, spoonbread is often served as part of a special meal—a Sunday or holiday dinner, say. Or, it might be the centerpiece of an otherwise unpretentious supper. The late Craig Claiborne, former
New York Times
food columnist and a native of Sunflower, Mississippi, noted, “In my house, [it] was always served with sliced, home-cured ham or with butter to be added according to taste,” while a WPA-era recipe collected by folklorist-historian Kate C. Hubbard recommends it with smoked sausage.
ULCHRITUDINOUS
P
OSSIBILITIES
As a vegetarian, I like spoonbread for an occasional special-friends-are-here-for-the-weekend brunch, as is, or with butter and jam, or, occasionally, with crisp soysage patties and a poached egg, the egg’s pellucid golden yolk awaiting only the poke of a fork to become a sauce for the spoonbread. Or with a drizzle of heated-up, good-quality jarred green or red chile sauce (I’m partial to those made by 505 Southwestern, see
www.505chile.com
).
Alternatively, it’s a fine centerpiece for a vegetable dinner, surrounded by a necklace of summer vegetables: a garlicky sauté of bitter greens, some sliced carrots slicked in a sweet glaze, maybe green beans or okra slowly cooked with tomato and more garlic. It’s also extremely tasty with cheese, especially Parmesan or Cheddar, sprinkled atop it while still hot. And I
have used it as the most elegant possible bed for a dark and aromatically gravied ragout of mixed wild fall mushrooms.
There are fewer variations in traditional spoonbread recipes than in other varieties of cornbread, and the variations that do exist are less hotly contested. The main hot button is whether the eggs should be separated or not. Unseparated eggs yield a simple-to-make, very moist spoonbread, a little heavy but delicious, somewhere between pudding, custard, and less-eggy quiche. Separated eggs give a still-moist but drier, and far lighter, finished spoonbread; in fact, this variety of spoonbread is a soufflé: puffed, golden brown, and ethereal. But, you do have the extra bowl and beaters to wash, as in any recipe calling for separated eggs. I have divided the spoonbread recipes here into soufflé style and pudding style.
What other spoonbread variables will you find? Whether yellow or white cornmeal should be used; whether, in the soufflé–style spoonbreads, baking powder (which supplies additional lift) should be employed; whether or not a touch of sugar is appropriate (very few spoonbreads use it). How much and which liquid or liquids should be used is another variable, and an important one structurally. Sometimes the preliminary mush is cooked in water, more frequently in milk. Sometimes the liquid is divided; only a portion goes to cooking the meal, and the rest is stirred in later. This makes another variation possible: The meal can be cooked in sweet milk or water, and then have buttermilk added later on.
Though I’m a skillet-sizzled cornbread type of girl as a rule, sometimes nothing else will do but that subtle puff of elevated cornmeal, grainy yet delicate, quiveringly moist and pale within, crisped and golden without. In its humble origins and sophisticated transmogrification, spoonbread is, like all of us, made from common stuff yet capable of transcendence.
B
EATING
E
GG
W
HITES
First, know that even a trace of fat inhibits the structure and formation of the egg-white foam. Not only must you always use a scrupulously clean bowl and beaters, free of any trace of oil or fat, but also the eggs must be separated perfectly, with not a speck of the fatty yolk in the whites. Foaming is slightly enhanced if the whites are at room temperature when you begin.
Second, know your egg-white beating bowls. Do
not
use a plastic bowl to beat egg whites. (Odd as it may seem, plastics have an inherent trace of fatty matter on their surfaces, which means that the egg-white foam’s structure will be compromised.) Choose a stainless-steel, glass, ceramic, or, best of all, copper bowl; these will not affect the foaming stability one way or the other except for the last, which actually assists in the process. A copper bowl, or a tiny pinch of cream of tartar added to the whites, slightly alters the whites’ pH and protein molecules to the benefit of the final result. In addition to using the right type of bowl, choose one that is large enough. Egg whites expand in volume eight to nine times in the course of beating.
The third trick is proper beating, which lies primarily in knowing when to stop.
Place the yolk-free whites, ideally at room temperature, in a very clean bowl. Add the cream of tartar, if using (no need for it if you are using a copper bowl). Making sure the beaters are also very clean, use either a hand-held or fixed mixer, or, if your wrists and forearms are sturdy indeed, a whisk, and begin beating the whites at medium speed. You will rapidly see the whites move from a viscous, transparent liquid to a slightly foamy consistency, at which point you should amp up the speed to as high as it can get. When using a handheld mixer, keep moving the beaters
around the bowl, up and around and through the whites, thus incorporating more air.
How do you know when you’ve beaten enough? As you approach this point, you’ll begin to notice the beater leaves waves or ridges of white that hold their shape in its wake. Turn off the mixer and lift the beaters from the foam. The foam should remain in stiff, upstanding glossy peaks, which do not flop back down, and the foam itself should have a smooth, uniform look to it. Stop here.
Last, bear in mind that even when beaten to perfection, egg whites’ stiff status is delicate. Unless otherwise instructed, all other ingredients in a recipe should be mixed and incorporated
before
you beat the whites, and the oven should be preheated, so that all that remains is the gentle folding in of the whites. Folding is always done by hand, never with a mixer, and always in a bowl large enough to accommodate both batter and whites. Start by blobbing about one third of the beaten whites atop the batter and then, working with a curved rubber spatula (sometimes called a “spoonula”), begin scooping batter from the bottom of the bowl up over the egg whites and down around, toward you, rotating the bowl as you do so, and cutting in through the largest visible patch of whites. When this first third is incorporated, add the remaining two thirds and repeat, always delicately, until the whites are incorporated. The exception to the one third–two thirds rule: If the recipe calls for two eggs or fewer, as is the case with Dixie Spoonbread, on
page 191
, just put the beaten whites in all at once.
In either case, there should be no large blobs visible post-folding, and the mixture as a whole should be far airier and lighter than in its previous batter stage.
If you have followed the directions, all that will remain is to transfer the batter into the prepared baking pan, ready for an instant pop into the hot waiting oven.
RAIG
C
LAIBORNE
’
S
S
UNFLOWER
, M
ISSISSIPPI
, S
POONBREAD
S
ERVES
4
AS AN ENTRÉE,
6
AS A SIDE DISH
“In countless interviews for
The New York Times
over the past thirty years, I have learned that nothing can equal the universal appeal of the food of one’s childhood and early youth,” wrote Craig Claiborne in the introduction to his 1987 book,
Southern Cooking.
For him, that was the food prepared by his mother (“a magnificent cook”) and the family’s servants, first in Sunflower, Mississippi, and then later in Indianola, where his mother ran a boarding house.
I have adapted Claiborne’s recipe for a delicious, basic soufflé–style spoonbread. See the Sunflower Supper menu, right, for ideas on how it might star at your table.
Vegetable oil cooking spray
3 cups milk
1½ cups sifted stone-ground yellow cornmeal
3 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt
4 eggs, separated
2 teaspoons baking powder
1.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Spray a deep 1½- to 2-quart baking dish with oil.
2.
Bring the milk to a boil in a medium saucepan, preferably nonstick. Gradually pour in the cornmeal with one hand, whisking with
the other, creating a very thick mixture. Lower the heat and add the butter and salt. Continue cooking over low heat, stirring almost constantly, for 10 minutes.
3.
Remove the cooked mush from the stove and transfer it into a medium-size heat-proof bowl. Let the mush cool to lukewarm, about 20 minutes.
4.
Meanwhile, place the egg yolks in a small bowl and the whites in a large, high-sided, non-plastic bowl. When the mush is lukewarm, beat the yolks vigorously with a fork, then whip the baking powder into them and quickly mix the yolks into the mush. Make sure the yolk mixture is thoroughly and evenly incorporated.
5.
Beat the egg whites until stiff and glossy (see Beating Egg Whites,
pages 186
–
187
). Gently fold them into the mush and transfer this thick batter to the prepared dish.
6.
Bake until a knife inserted into the center comes out barely clean, 40 minutes. The spoonbread will have risen slightly, and its top will be irregular, with little patches that are deeply golden brown. Serve at once, hot from the oven.
·M·E·N·U·
S
UNFLOWER
S
UPPER
Fresh Tomato Slices, with Minced Parsley and Chervil (or Celery Leaves), Salt, and Pepper
*
Craig Claiborne’s Sunflower, Mississippi, Spoonbread
*
Thin-Sliced Home–Style Ham, and/or
Beans, Old South Style
or
Beans Dragon-in-the-New-South Style
*
Greens, Old South Style
or
Greens, New South Style
*
Peach Ice Cream Benne Seed Cookies
LASSIC
S
OUFFLEÉD
S
POONBREAD
S
ERVES
4
AS AN ENTRÉE,
6
TO
8
AS A SIDE DISH
The texture of this finished spoonbread is smooth and tender, its flavor pure. This is the kind of spoonbread I remember eating at Miss Kay’s (see
page 341
), and you will find its close cousins in virtually all Southern community cookbooks. I prefer it made with white cornmeal, but it will work with yellow just fine.
Vegetable oil cooking spray
4 cups milk
1 cup sifted stone-ground white or yellow cornmeal
2 tablespoons butter
1½ teaspoons salt
4 eggs, separated
1.
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Spray a deep 1½- to 2-quart baking dish with oil.
2.
Bring the milk to a boil in a medium saucepan, preferably nonstick. Gradually pour in the cornmeal with one hand, whisking with the other, creating a very thick mixture. Lower
the heat and add the butter and salt. Continue cooking over low heat, stirring almost constantly, for 10 minutes.
3.
Remove the cooked mush from the stove and transfer it to a medium-size heat-proof bowl. Let the mush cool to lukewarm, about 20 minutes.
4.
Meanwhile, place the egg yolks in a small bowl and the whites in a large, high-sided, non-plastic bowl. When the mush is lukewarm, beat the yolks vigorously with a fork, then mix the yolks into the mush, making sure they are thoroughly and evenly incorporated.
5.
Beat the egg whites until stiff and glossy (see Beating Egg Whites,
pages 186
–
187
). Gently fold them into the batter as much as you can (the batter will be fairly liquid) and pour this into the prepared dish.
6.
Bake until a knife inserted into the center comes out barely clean and the top is deeply golden brown, 40 to 45 minutes. Serve at once, straight from the dish and hot from the oven.