Monday, April 13, 2015

Yanqui's Southern Cornbread

Yep.  Here's the yanq with his recipe for good ol' downhome Southern cornbread ...adapted for all y'all in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Now the yanq is a Northern boy ...but I've always preferred Southern cornbread.  What's the difference, you ask?  Well, although you will find quite a bit of cross-over, Southern cornbread is baked without sugar and with a scant amount of wheat flour.

Careful, though.  Other than how to make "real chili", questioning what constitutes "real cornbread" has caused more fists to swing on more than one occasion down South than anything (culinary) I can think of.  This is further complicated by a lot of Southern grandmas who actually put sugar in their cornbread ...you don't want to get your ass kicked by Bubba or his grandma ...or both.  Like religion and politics, keep your cornbread opinions to yourself south of the Mason-Dixon line.  Up North, we really don't care how you make your cornbread.

Northern cornbread is described as "cake" down South.  It's fluffier and sweeter than its Southern counterpart  That's probably due to the greater availability of hard wheat bread flour up North (some Yankee cornbread hardly has any corn in it at all.)  The sweet part probably comes from the molasses and sugar that was our part of the sugar/rum/slaves triangle.

Being a fanatic for grains of all kinds, not to mention the lack of a sweet tooth, my favorite is the savory stuff that Southerners consider one of the icons of their cuisine.

Like I said, this recipe is adapted for use in Buenos Aires ...with the exception being a cast iron skillet is essential.  Essential.  No, your cast aluminum Essen (a SUPER product) will not do.  I have heard, however, that there is an enterprising Argentino who is beginning to cast some very fine iron skillets here. I'll let you know what I hear; I'm on the caper.

Step 1.  preheat your oven to 450° F (230° C)

You can go hotter but you risk blackening your cornbread.  My wife likes that!  Me, not so much.

Step 2.  combine the dry ingredients: 
 2 cups of polenta, 4 tablespoons of 00 white flour, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, 2 tablespoons of baking soda, and 1 teaspoon of salt.  Put all of it together in a nice big bowl and mix thoroughly. Mix, mix, mix.

Yep, polenta.  That's not as strange as it might seem ...good cornbread needs a relatively fine grind anyway and polenta here fills the bill.  I wish I could recommend non-instant polenta ...but I don't think that exists here anymore.  Instant polenta could actually help this recipe, though ...I think it absorbs the wet ingredients quicker.

The white flour is important.  Cornmeal has little to no gluten and you need gluten to get your cornbread to rise.  If I can't find good bread flour, I keep some pure gluten on hand (you can find it pretty easily here in natural food stores) and I add a couple of teaspoons to the wheat flour.  You get more effect and still get to keep the flour down to a respectable minimum.

If the amount of baking soda seems a bit over the top, just wait.  It's essential and it keeps your salt down to 1 teaspoon.

Step 3.  beat 3 eggs

That's more eggs than most recipes recommend ...but eggs also give the corn meal a structure it can use like the high gluten flour to make your cornbread rise and become fluffy and stay a little moister.  Good Southern cornbread should be dense ...but too dense can interfere with your enjoyment.  Grandma was probably lying about only adding 2 eggs, anyway.

Step 4.  make 2 cups of "buttermilk"

Now, if you can find buttermilk in Argentina, good on you.  However, even if you can find it, you might want to "make" it yourself.  Buttermilk adds two things to a cornbread recipe: acid and that cultured/fermented flavor.  The most important thing is the acid.  The acid of the buttermilk will react with the baking soda and cause your batter to foam.  This foaminess, along with what the heat will do to the eggs and baking powder will leaven your cornbread and people will think you're a magician ...or will suspect you have an old family secret recipe.  Stick with the old secret family recipe story.

To "make" buttermilk take your 2 cups of milk and add 3 tablespoons of cider vinegar.  Wait 5 minutes then add the beaten eggs.

Step 5.  preheat your cast iron skillet with 3 tablespoons of grease/oil for about 5 minutes but not enough to make the skillet smoke.

If it smokes a little, that's ok ...but no more.  Since your skillet is black, it's hard to tell when you've burned your oil.  That burned fat could contribute some bad flavors ...of course, if your grandmother always burned the fat, maybe it'll just bring back pleasant memories!

Bacon fat would be the preferred grease ...but that's hard to find here.  Vegetable oil of any kind is fine.  I use pork lard (grasa porcina comestible) but beef fat would be fine, as well.  Butter is problematic because it burns too easily for this recipe ...if you're going to use butter, clarify it to help it handle the high temperatures.  Sometimes, I add a very little liquid smoke to my lard to try to approximate bacon fat.

Step 6.  pour the egg/buttermilk mixture into the dry ingredients 

Mix the wet and dry ingredient together very quickly ...but not brutally.  Don't beat them together like you were whipping cream, just mix them gently so that there are no clumps of dry ingredients.  You may notice some foaming ...that's nice.

Step 7.  pour the batter into your hot skillet

Don't let this step baffle you.  The skillet is not there to cook your cornbread.  You only want that unbeatable thermal mass of the cast iron to give your cornbread a head start on baking.  Don't try to "fry" your cornbread on the stove top for a while before placing it in the oven.  That won't achieve anything except to increase your chances of cornbread burned on the bottom.

This recipe assumes a 10 inch (25cm) skillet.  What you're trying to do here is fill your skillet almost to the top ...so that your cornbread won't look so much like a tortilla or fallen souffle.  Cornbread doesn't rise like wheat bread; it won't overflow your skillet in the oven.  The batter's depth in your skillet will be about the height of your result.

If your skillet is larger (lucky you!) you may want to augment this recipe.  If your skillet is smaller, you're also in luck ...any left over batter can go back into your hot skillet, with a smidgen of oil, to make deelicious pancakes, hoe cakes, johnny cakes, journey cakes ...whatever you wanna call them.

Step 8.  place your hot, batter-filled skilled into your preheated oven

Careful, now ...that skillet is hot and your oven is hot.  Goof up and you could hurt yourself or others around you.

Leave it there for 20 minutes.  That seems to be the magic number of minutes.  The already HOT iron skillet starts helping it to bake immediately.  You're looking for the careful balance of making sure that the center of the batter bakes solid ...and to making sure that your cornbread doesn't burn on the bottom.  Your oven rack placed half way up seems to give the best results.

Don't get paranoid, corn meal can take a lot of heat ...and there really isn't much else in this recipe.  Your cornbread should not be a pale color on the outside.

Step 9.  take the skillet out of the oven and let it cool slightly

I'm always afraid of letting the cornbread cool too much in the skillet ...a little bit is needed for it to release but too much and I'm afraid it will stick.  If your skillet is well-seasoned, it might just pop out like it was teflon once turned upside-down.  If it doesn't, just gently pry it from the upside-down skillet with a small fork.  That's probably just me being paranoid ...I've never had any problems.

Step 10.  eat some cornbread!

Cornbread and buttermilk, country-boy's delight
I eat in the mornin', I eat it noon and night.
Some peoples like fried chicken
And others likes the HAM
But cornbread and buttermilk makes me what I am.

If you are lucky enough to have buttermilk, go ahead and dunk it and dip it in a cold glass.  Otherwise, just slather some sweet cream butter on it right out of the oven (it doesn't need to cool like a cake.)

I think chili always tastes better with cornbread ...or you could do MY favorite and serve it with YOUR favorite bowl of beans.  Way yum.

Once you've gotten comfortable with this recipe, don't hesitate to play around with it.  Adding cheese and hot peppers and maybe a little cumin to the batter is a great variant.  Bacon (of course!) or any smokey meat would be welcome just about anywhere with any sense.

Don't forget what I said about making pancakes from the batter!  Just do the same skillet/oven routine ...but cut back the baking time to more like 10 minutes ...and keep the oil/fat/grease to a minimum.  No more boring pancakes!  And if you're a dyed in the wool Yankee, some butter and maple syrup will stoke you for heading out to work in the cranberry bogs (hmm... some cranberries, too?)  These pancakes rival fried cornmeal mush!  You might choose to forget about making cornbread.

Well, that's it.  I made only sucky cornbread all my life.  The cast iron skillet is the key ...and those are hard to get a friend to mule down to Baires for you.  On a serious note, however, I truly am following up a lead on a guy here who is forging black iron for our kitchens ...if that's true, I'll be sending him a bunch of customers.

Provecho!
Mike

2 comments:

99 said...

... And it is DEEEE-LICIOUSSSSS, DEEEE-LIGHTFULLLL and DIIII-VINE!!!!

Buenos Aires Horse Adventures said...

Definitely gonna give it a go, thanks Mike