Cornbread

Here is a recipe I adapted from the cooking of Kurt Gardner, a New York theater man of great culinary passions who has been contributing the dish to our home for years, usually in proportions large enough to feed boroughs. Rare is the month where there is not a frozen bag of this stuff in our freezer, ready to be deployed.

This cornbread—made slightly sweet with the addition of dark brown sugar—mixes very easily: Just whisk together the dry ingredients; melt the butter and sugar; and whisk in cold milk to cool the liquid. Next, whisk in the eggs, then stir the brown sugar mixture into the cornmeal, scrape the batter into the pan, and bake.

最生动的味道记忆我将智慧h Thanksgiving is the flavor of crisp turkey skin. I almost always get first dibs on the wing tips and sneak into the kitchen to peel off the crispiest pieces of golden, salt-and-peppery cracklin’s before the carvers go to work. The intensity of flavor means it doesn’t take a lot of skins to satisfy my craving, but by the end of the meal, I usually find myself yearning for just one more piece. This corn bread is designed to take the pressure off that yearning, substituting the smoky, salty flavor of crackly bacon for the turkey skin. However, I often make a variation of this, buying a half-pound of chicken or turkey skins from the butcher, laying them out on a sheet pan, seasoning them with salt and pepper, and baking at 350°F until they render their fat and become very crisp and crumbly, just like bacon. The use of sugar, honey, buttermilk, lots of corn kernels, and polenta-grind cornmeal (rather than the usual finely ground cornmeal) gives this bread moisture, texture, and sweet yet tart flavor bursts. The bacon (or cracklings) on the top is the final payoff, complementing any Thanksgiving dinner or re-creating Thanksgiving flavor memories throughout the year. I have an ongoing love affair with good corn bread. By good I mean moist and sweet, with crunch and texture. This recipe is my favorite, and it is the best corn bread I have ever made or eaten. Corn bread falls into the category of quick breads, since it is leavened by baking powder (see information on chemical leavening). Even though this book is not about chemically leavened quick breads, I couldn’t resist adding it to the collection because, frankly, I just don’t think it gets any better than this.

Loaded Cornbread is the cornbread for a crowd and essential for a big barbecue. Dense and moist with Cheddar cheese, cream-style corn, and buttermilk, it can be baked in advance and cut into neat squares. Unlike traditional skillet cornbread that’s best eaten hot out of the oven, Loaded Cornbread travels well and tastes fine at room temperature. The jalapeños are up to you. Substitute a chopped fresh mild green chile or even a can of them. The other substitution is yogurt for buttermilk. Again, if the batter seems too thick, add a little water.

Corn Light Bread, a favorite barbecue side in middle Tennessee, breaks all the Southern cornbread rules. It’s loaded with flour and sugar and it’s baked in a loaf pan. Why sweet cornbread with barbecue? Our guess is that sweet-sauced barbecue calls for a sweeter bread, just like the customary pairing of a sweet wine with a sweet dessert. Anything not sweet enough just tastes sour. Judging how most of the country prefers sweet cornbread, this may be the one that tastes the most like home.

Other than a soft bun or white bread, cornbread is the choice for barbecue. Min has been making it so long she only uses the recipe in her head. After years of working with the test kitchen staff of Martha White, the historic Nashville flour and cornmeal company, and writing the live radio commercials for Martha White’s Friday night segment of the Grand Ole Opry, who needs a recipe? The key, of course, is self-rising cornmeal mix. Southerners prefer white cornmeal (made with white corn) to yellow. So do Rhode Islanders, as R. B. likes to point out, where the native white corn johnnycakes are as ancient as their close cousins, Southern hot water hoecakes. Either way, white and yellow are interchangeable and basically a regional preference, like white and brown eggs. Don’t get hung up on color. For cornbread, it’s all about crust and batter. First, the best crust comes only from a well-seasoned black iron skillet preheated with bacon drippings or oil. When the batter hits the pan, POW! It sizzles. Second, the batter must be creamy and pourable. If your batter is thick and dense, add more liquid, because you want the batter to slide to the edges of the pan with ease. Cornmeal absorbs quite a lot of liquid, and even a shot of water can loosen things up. Get the feel of good cornbread batter, and crumbly, dry cornbread will be a thing of the past. Now, about the balance of outside crust to inside moisture. For Min, the finest cornbread is an inch thick and a mile wide. Most 2-cup recipes baked in an 8- or 10-inch skillet are just too tall, denying the cornbread its rightful ratio of crust. Min uses about 1 1/2 cups of cornmeal mix for a 12-inch skillet and only about a cup for a 10-inch. Sugar is also an issue that divides cornbread camps. The most common cornbread recipes and mixes are often half flour and half cornmeal, with a heavy dose of sweetness. We’re in the other camp, using very little sugar (or none at all) in skillet cornbread. It’s just a matter of taste. If you live in the land of self-rising cornmeal mix, get acquainted with it and use it to replace the plain cornmeal, flour, leavening, and salt. It’s the best way to go. If not, and you don’t have a relative to send you some, give this a try. Always serve cornbread flipped out of the pan with the beautiful browned crust faceup. Whatever you do, invest in a good cast-iron skillet. It will bring your family generations of top-notch cornbread.

Ranch Style® Beans are Min’s number one foolproof side dish for instant satisfaction every time. She says that if Andy Warhol had been a Texan, the Ranch Style® Beans can would hang in museums throughout the world. The chili pintos’ unmistakable label dressed in basic black with bright white Western lettering and yellow and red accents is as common a sight in Southwestern pantries as Campbell’s tomato soup ever was. These well-seasoned beans make an “appetite pleasin’” homey cornbread casserole with any leftover cheater meat.

Every summer when my husband, David, and I visit his parents, we arrive at their house to a feast of peel-and-eat shrimp, Jean’s crab salad, and of course enough “softies” to feed the entire neighborhood. On the Eastern Shore of Maryland, soft-shell crabs (blue crabs that have molted their shells) are a grand tradition. The season starts in late spring and continues through the summer. Crabbers must be vigilant: there is only a 4- to 5-hour window during which molting blue crabs are in the “soft-shell” stage, after which their new shells harden if they are not removed from the water. David keeps his Maryland pride alive while living on the West Coast. Every year when crab season starts, his father ships us a few flats of live crabs, and we throw a decadent soft-shell party. We decided that if our humble castle had a coat of arms, it would be two crossed strips of bacon with a soft-shell crab in the center

Sautéed corn moistens this cornbread, but you can omit it if you are using the bread in a traditional stuffing. For a spicy variation, add two medium jalapeños, seeded and finely chopped, to the corn before sautéeing.

Any Southern cookin’ conjures up corn bread. Ours is sweet and mellow and goes great with the tanginess of our bar-b-que.

This is great bread for any meal, but one of my favorite ways to eat it is crumbled up in a big bowl with really cold milk. Mmmm! Beth likes it cold with buttermilk. Now that’s just wrong!

你不能没有胡炸鲶鱼(第106页)shpuppies! Sometimes I add a few more jalapeños to the mixture for a little extra jolt. There are several stories about how hushpuppies got their name. My favorite is the one where an old southern cook was frying them one day and heard her dog howling nearby, so she gave him a plateful and said, “Hush, puppy!” It might just be folklore, but I like it.

As its name implies, this savory Southern side dish is so soft it should be served—and eaten—with a spoon. You could serve the spoon bread as an alternative to cornbread with the barbecued ribs on page 202 or with the turkey chili on page 173.

A technique for making cornbread with an extra crispy crust is to bake it in a preheated cast-iron skillet. When fresh corn is in season, try adding juicy kernels to the batter.

Every family in Mexico has its own version of this traditional soft corn bread. The classic recipe here is my favorite. Enjoy it as is, or experiment with sweet and savory versions by adding dried fruit or chopped jalapeños. Top sweeter versions with Creamed Rajas (page 188); savory versions are great with salsas. No matter how you make it, this Mexican delight is a perfect side for carne asada.