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Cornbread's World of Wonders

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No foodstuffs loom larger in mountain culinary traditions than the many and varied ways in which cornmeal is turned into cornbread. In that process a sort of wonderment takes place. The most prevalent and pedestrian of all mountain vegetables, corn, undergoes a magical transition to emerge as a whole host of delicacies and taste delights. In doing so it achieves a lofty perch that merits recognition as the “mother church” of vegetables in much the same fashion pork long held pride of place on the meat side of matters.

On a personal level, my views of cornbread have been an ongoing process of maturation and education, and I strongly suspect the same holds true for many another lad and lass with roots deep in the soil of Southern Appalachia. Just as Mark Twain mused about how his father’s breadth of knowledge increased dramatically between the time when the author was 14 and when he reached his majority at the age of 21, my appreciation of cornbread has grown with passage of the years. What I once considered po’ pickins for supper, leftover cornbread and buttermilk, has become a feast. Similarly, I’m not sure you can find much finer eating, never mind its simplicity, than a big bowl of soup beans amply buttressed by a crusty pone of cornbread fresh from a cast iron skillet. As these words are being written I’ve got pintos and some bits of country ham simmering in a pot. Come day’s end I’ll match them with cornbread and some greens cooked with slices of turnip for a trip to hillbilly culinary heaven.

One of the real virtues of cornmeal is the myriad ways in which it can be prepared for the table. Mush, batter cakes, dumplings, pudding, and more come into the picture in addition to the many possibilities for types of cornbread. For the present though, here are a half dozen approaches to cornbread that bear tasty promise of bringing welcome variety to an old staple.

There are countless recipes, usually with small variations, for traditional cornbread. Here are two examples—my own approach and that of my friend in mountain food and coauthor of Celebrating Southern Appalachian Food: Recipes & Stories from Mountain Kitchens, Tipper Pressley. There are, however, some basics that figure as a part of almost all top-drawer offerings of this staple food. They include cooking in cast-iron ware, reliance on stone-ground meal rather than that which has been “fast ground” (modern milling involves too much heat and detracts from flavor), bacon grease or lard, an egg or eggs, and milk or buttermilk. Also, in my studied view, adding sugar to cornbread is an abomination introduced by carpetbaggers, outlanders, or others with a woeful lack of taste or common sense (or both). Mind you, in case the latter part of the previous sentence might offend some, I’ll hastily add that a chunk of hot cornbread gussied up with butter and molasses makes some mighty fine fare.

Cornbread the Casada Way

Grease a cast iron skillet with an uncooked piece of streaked meat or a streak of bacon and place it in the oven during pre-heating. Rely on stone-ground meal (yellow or white according to your personal preference, although as a boy I often heard “yellow corn is for critters and white corn is for folks”). You can sift the meal if you like, although most don’t and prefer the extra bit of texture or crunchiness that results. Finally, make sure you have your batter completely stirred before pouring into the skillet for baking.

Preheat oven and greased skillet to 400 degrees. Whisk all the ingredients thoroughly in a large bowl. Remove the hot pan from the oven and pour in the batter. Return to the oven and cook until golden brown on top (bottom will be a crusty and darker)—20-25 minutes.

TIP: When you slide the cooked pone from the skillet onto a plate, place two or three pats of butter atop it and, as they melt, spread them across the crust.

Tipper's Cornbread

Grease cast iron pan liberally with bacon fat or lard. Place in oven and preheat to 475 degrees. Place 2 cups cornmeal in mixing bowl. Combine egg, oil, and milk, and then pour into bowl with cornmeal and mix thoroughly. Carefully removed heated pan from oven and add batter. Bake for 20 minutes or until done.

TIP: Sprinkling the hot pan with cornmeal before adding the batter will make an even crisper crust.

Beany Cornbread

Various types of dried beans, black-eyed peas, and other field peas can be added to standard cornmeal batter and baked for a beans-and-bread feast. You can even use fully reconstituted and cooked leather britches (dried green beans). Just make sure the dried beans or peas (pre-cooked as if ready for eating as a separate dish) are well drained before being added to your batter and whisked in gently. Otherwise proceed as you would with an ordinary cake of cornbread, but allow a few minutes extra cooking time. This is, in a sense, a way of enjoying the traditional soup beans and cornbread meal in a combo.

Cracklin' Cornbread

For city folks or indeed pretty much anyone who never knew the labor-intensive joys of hog-killing time on a cold November day, cracklings (the grease-rich tidbits left when pork fat is rendered to lard) have led a life of deprivation when it comes to full culinary joy. Traditionally cracklings were skimmed from a big cast iron pot where lard was rendered. This was one part of a complex process where willing hands joined in a day-long effort that involved killing pigs, removing the entrails, scalding and scraping the hide, and then working up everything but the squeal.

Cracklings would be stuffed into quart jars and covered to the top with piping hot, freshly rendered lard. The heat took care of the sealing, and the cracklings then awaited removal from cannery shelves for a marriage with cornmeal assuredly made in gustatory heaven. Either of the recipes above can be amended a bit for cracklin’ cornbread—just leave out most if not all of the lard, bacon drippings or vegetable oil. The cracklings carry enough grease to meet what the cornbread needs on that front. Alternatively, here’s a simple old-time recipe the way my Grandma Minnie made cracklin’ cornbread.

Begin by spreading the cracklings on a cutting board or similar surface and running a rolling pin over them a couple of times. Then make dough of the other ingredients. Heat the crushed cracklings and stir them into the dough. The dough will be quite stiff and should mold readily when worked by hand (if it sticks to your hands dust them in flour or cornmeal). Shape the dough ball into small individual pones, more or less in the oblong shape associated with corn dodgers, and bake in a thoroughly greased cast-iron skillet at 400 degrees. The small, individual size pones will bake quite rapidly so keep a close watch on them. You’ll have leftovers, and warmed over they are mighty tasty.

Hushpuppies

Although they aren’t normally thought of as a type of cornbread, that is what this beloved accompaniment to fried fish amounts to in essence. This recipe was one used by “Aunt” Mag Williams, a wonderful African-American cook from my boyhood who lived just down the road from my family’s home. She absolutely loved fish and in her eyes a mess of catfish fillets or a batch of bream (usually supplied by yours truly in return for worm-digging privileges in her chicken lot) without hushpuppies was like eating eggs for breakfast without ham, bacon, or biscuits as accompaniments.

Combine the cornmeal, flour and garlic salt and mix well. Beat the onion, eggs, and milk in a separate bowl and add to the dry ingredients. Place in a refrigerator or freezer (for Aunt Mag, that translated to an old-time ice box) to cool while you heat oil or lard to 375 degrees in a deep fryer or Dutch oven. Drop teaspoons of the batter, just a few at a time, into the hot oil. Cook until golden brown, turning with tongs to cook evenly on all sides. Makes about 30 large hushpuppies, but for large groups the recipe can be doubled or expanded by other multiples.

WARNING: It’s difficult to resist sampling hot, freshly cooked hushpuppies, which should be placed atop paper towels to drain while more are in the making. Things get even worse if you allow bystanders to start savoring them.

Veggie Cornbread

In addition to the “Beany Cornbread” covered above, a whole bunch of other vegetables can be incorporated into cornbread batter and baked. Just proceed with your favorite cornbread recipe but add any of the following—corn freshly grated from the cob, steamed broccoli that has been cooled and chopped into bits with an ulu or chef’s knife, bits of hot peppers, chopped up ground cherries or tomatillos, or even chopped green tomatoes. Cornbread with vegetables can be baked as you usually would but allow a couple of extra minutes in the oven. This is in effect a hot version or take off on another mountain favorite, cornbread salad.

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