The Cornbread Gospels (6 page)

M
AKES
8
LARGE WEDGES

This cornbread, like many Southern cornbreads, is baked in a skillet and incorporates buttermilk. But here the resemblance ends. This is the cornbread songwriter Patsy Bruce (“Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” is one of hers) grew up eating. It’s quite eggy, which gives it almost a spoonbread-like character. And it is
fast
! Self-rising flour and self-rising cornmeal (both of which are already salted and leavened) are used, so the number of ingredients is reduced, hence prep time is lessened.

P.S. If you, like me, prefer stone-ground meals, try the substitute for self-rising cornmeal in the Pantry.

¼ cup mild vegetable oil

½ cup self-rising flour

1½ cups self-rising cornmeal (see Pantry,
page 350
)

3 eggs

2 cups buttermilk

1.
Preheat the oven to 500°F.

2.
Place half of the oil in a 12-inch cast-iron skillet and the other half in a large bowl. Put the skillet on the stove, over medium heat.

3.
Combine the flour and cornmeal well in a medium bowl and set aside. To the oil in the large bowl, add the eggs and beat well. Add the buttermilk and stir in the dry mixture until nearly smooth. The batter will be thinner than usual for cornbread, more like the consistency of pancake batter.

4.
Pour the batter into the hot oiled skillet, and pop the skillet into the oven. Bake the cornbread until it is brown and crusty, 15 to 20 minutes.

M
AKES
8
WEDGES

Mary Cone was at various times in her life a dirt-poor east-Texas Depression-era child, a flirtatious and feisty young woman, a mother, and a businesswoman. By the time I knew her, she was an old lady, a compulsive mystery reader and crossword addict. She was also helping out and being helped by my friend, her daughter Lisa, at Waterfall Hollow Farm in Berryville, Arkansas, the family’s pasture-finished natural beef business (www.waterfallhollowfarm.com).

The last time I visited the farm, which was also the last time I saw Mary, she wrote out for me the cornbread recipe she had grown up on. It is thin and crisp, ideal for crumbling into stews, chilies, and buttermilk.

1 cup stone-ground white cornmeal

½ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

1 egg

1 cup buttermilk

2 tablespoons mild vegetable oil

1.
Preheat the oven to 450°F.

2.
Quickly combine all ingredients except the oil in a large bowl, whisking well.

3.
Put the oil in a 10-inch cast-iron skillet and heat the skillet, either on top of the stove or in the oven. When the skillet is good and hot (“the oil should be smoking,” Lisa told me), pour in the batter.

4.
Now, here’s the unusual part: Let the poured-in batter sit in the skillet for 20 minutes on a heat-proof surface. Then, transfer the skillet to the oven and bake the cornbread until it is brown and crusty, 20 to 25 minutes.

M
AKES
8
THIN WEDGES

Arkansas has several distinct bioregions. Across the state from the hilly Ozarks (in Arkansas’s northwest corner), to the east and a bit to the south, are the flat, moist lands just above the Mississippi Delta. In 1980, the Arkansas Symphony Guild produced a fund-raising cookbook called
Concerts from the Kitchen
, which contained “Cornbread for Georgetown, Arkansas.” This tiny community (present population 129; population in 1980, 75) is on the White River. “This recipe originated with an old cook employed on a nearby plantation,” noted the book’s author, Marilyn Criner. The original recipe called for “fat,” presumably bacon drippings, but I use butter.

2 tablespoons butter, mild vegetable oil, or bacon drippings

1 cup stone-ground white cornmeal

2 tablespoons unbleached white flour

¼ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 cup buttermilk

1.
Preheat the oven to 425°F. Place the butter in a 10-inch cast-iron skillet and place the skillet in the oven.

2.
Combine the cornmeal, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a large heat-proof bowl and stir well.

3.
Beat the eggs and buttermilk together in a medium bowl. Add them to the dry mixture and whisk a few times.

4.
Carefully remove the hot skillet from the oven. The butter should be smoking. (If it isn’t smoking yet, continue heating it on the stove until it is.) Pour about half of the hot butter from the skillet into the bowl containing the batter. Set the skillet down, whisk the batter just until the ingredients are combined, and immediately pour it into the hot skillet.

5.
Return the skillet to the oven and bake the cornbread until it is firm to the touch but not brown on top, 10 to 15 minutes.

6.
Turn the oven to broil and broil the cornbread for a few minutes, watching closely, just enough to brown the top slightly.

7.
Serve hot, cut into wedges.

M
AKES
8
WEDGES

David Johnston, an East-Tennessean and Dairy Hollow guest, disapproved of our cornbread, although he was highly cordial about everything else. “Notice that
my
recipe does
not
call for sugar,” he noted on the top of the file card he sent me after he returned home. Then, echoing Mark Twain’s famous line, he added,
“Real
cornbread does
not
contain sugar.”

If you want to make cornbread like they do it in the Delta, use bacon drippings, though I myself go for half oil, half butter.

Vegetable oil cooking spray

¼ cup mild vegetable oil, melted butter, or bacon drippings

2 cups self-rising cornmeal (see Pantry,
page 350
)

1½ cups milk

1 egg

1.
Preheat the oven to 350°F.

2.
Spray a 10-inch cast-iron skillet with oil and place 2 tablespoons of the fat of your choice in it. Put the skillet in the oven to get good and hot. Let it stay there a couple of minutes before you start mixing the batter, which is so quick to put together you need to give the skillet a head start.

3.
While the skillet heats, combine the self-rising cornmeal, milk, egg, and the remaining 2 tablespoons of fat in a medium bowl. Don’t overbeat.

4.
When the oil and skillet are both smoking-hot, remove the skillet from the oven and pour in the batter.

5.
Return the skillet to the oven and bake the cornbread for 20 minutes, then crank the heat to Broil until the bread is extra crusty and deeply golden on top, 1 to 2 minutes.

M
AKES
8
WEDGES

This is adapted from a recipe from the excellent, story-rich
Kwanzaa: an African-American Celebration of Culture and Cooking
, by Eric V. Copage. Typical of many African American cornbreads, it’s a little sweet and extremely moist. Creamed corn gives it a comforting pudding-like texture.

Vegetable oil cooking spray

¼ cup (½ stick) butter

1 cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal

¾ cup unbleached white flour

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup canned creamed corn (see Pantry,
page 351
)

1 cup milk

1 egg

1.
Preheat the oven to 450°F. Spray a 9-inch round cake pan with oil and add half of the butter. Put the pan in the oven to let it get very hot.

2.
Meanwhile, combine the cornmeal, flour, and sugar in a medium heat-proof bowl, then sift in the baking powder and salt.

3.
Whisk together the creamed corn, milk, and egg in a small bowl.

4.
Add the wet mixture to the dry, stirring until all is combined but taking care not to overbeat.

5.
By now your pan should be nice and hot. Remove it from the oven, lowering the oven temperature to 400°F. Carefully pour about half of the by-now-melted butter from the hot pan into the batter. Stir the batter a couple of times, and then pour it into the hot pan.

6.
Bake until the cornbread is golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes. Remove the cornbread from the oven and let it stand for 15 minutes before serving.

I met a lovely dreadlocked young woman selling vegetarian food from a booth at the Eighth Annual Central Avenue Jazz Festival in Los Angeles. She was kind enough to give me this recipe, which, she explained, is “Just like my grandma’s but vegan.” Follow the recipe above, but instead of the egg use reconstituted egg replacer, either homemade (see Eggscellence,
page 352
) or commercial, to equal one egg; instead of the 1 cup dairy milk use ¾ cup soy milk; and instead of the butter use 5 tablespoons (¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon) canola oil or vegan margarine. Add an extra 2 tablespoons canned creamed corn (see Pantry,
page 351
).