Cornbread

Good morning!

Yes, cornbread deserves a day all to itself. I will give you the best cornbread recipe I've found in the great wide world. I give it to you with qualifications, that is, my own amendments and cautions.

You really need an iron skillet to bake it in, but little corncob pans, muffin tins, and plain old Mirro baking pans will turn out a fine panful.

Here is the caution. I do not use yellow cornmeal, yet we must use it. ALL American yellow cornmeal is now genetically modified  , I have been reading.  NO American white cornmeal is now genetically modified. So it makes sense to me to use the white.  European cornmeals, which are not made from genetically modified corn, are pretty available too if you look.  I shall use white cornmeal in place of yellow now, mostly.

Recipe:

1 c. cornmeal
1/2 c. flour
1 t. salt

Put the above into mixing bowl, unmixed.

Then add 1 c. buttermilk, sour milk, sour cream...or as I often do: milk with 1 T. apple cider vinegar stirred into it.
1/2 c. milk or even water
1 egg
1 T. baking powder
1/2 t. soda
1/4 c. melted shortening, cooled down

Just add that in on top of the dry mixture.

PUT YOUR PAN, well greased, into the oven for a few minutes. Or, as I do, melt the butter or shortening in the iron skillet then pour out and cool before adding to the dry ingredients. Warm up your skillet, stir up all the above quickly and thoroughly, and pour into the pan. Put it into an oven that you have already heated to 450 degrees. That's hot. Cook it until it is done. It will be brown on the bottom and delicious all the way through.

My mother made great cornbread, but never gave me a recipe for it. She had just learned how to do it and did it. Her one stricture was, never never to put sugar into it.  "The Yankees put sugar in their cornbread,  but we never do."  Yes, the Yankees still existed in our household in my childhood...Mainly the way not to do things.  We always peeled tomatoes before serving them. The Yankees did not. And we never put sugar into whipped cream, and  the Yankees did that too. In Texas you can still buy areosol  real whipped cream that is not sweetened (though I can't ever find it in CA) so I know that those Yankees were not a figment of our imagination.

Before I blow this communique away altogether (as I did a couple of days ago and had to start from scratch)...I'll go to my very favorite cornbread. I asked my mother how to make it when I was young, and she said, "Put some white cornmeal into a  mixing bowl, and add salt."  How much? You should be able to figure it out. In the meanwhile you are boiling up a great deal of water.  Mix the cornmeal and salt and pour on a lot of boiling water. Stir it up.  Pour on more. Stir.  Pour on more. It's astounding how much water a couple of cups of white cornmeal can absorb, gently cooking itself in the process. When it's just right, you take out a little of it and make a small oval patty. Repeat.

In the black iron skillet, she'd melted an inch or so of Crisco, which in those days was made of hydrogenated cottonseed oil. She would put those little patties into the oil and fry them, first on one side and then on the other. They were golden, crisp, and perfect for nibbling. I am trying to remember whether or not she dipped them into flour before putting them into the frying pan. Maybe she did. I have not tried to make them for years, of course, since fat has been discovered to be a devil in disguise. Thank goodness some of that opinion seems to be changing. But I'll not be making those wonderful little cornbreads any time soon, sadly. YAZZYBEL