The Cornbread Gospels (4 page)

But here’s the thing—the magic of the South, human resilience, and, yes, cornbread—he didn’t sound in the least depressed in the way we use the word now. He sounded
proud
, as so often do those who survive hard times.

Slowly, cornbread’s character in the South began to change. Gradually, times began to get better, and cornbread’s associations began to
become positive. As cornbread became a
chosen
food, not just the only option, its inherent goodness shone through. It became enriched with the occasional egg or fat or buttermilk; other dishes became available to eat
with
it, and it was not eaten raw, nor baked in leaves and ash, but cooked in a skillet, in an oven. The rough past began to glow. Cornbread was good, and so was pride in the accomplishment of not only surviving, but surviving well, despite long odds. In 1988, Bob Lancaster wrote in the
Arkansas Times
that Southerners could “make a filling, gratifying supper out of cornbread and not much else. Forgive the nostalgia, but my mother did it at least a thousand times—and I didn’t come along until after the hard times. Cornbread and sweet milk—with a green onion on the side in season. If I had thought about it, which I don’t recall ever having done, I would have supposed that this was a meal for the privileged rather than the poor, and I would have been right.”

He would have been, but “a meal for the privileged
and
the poor” is closer to the truth. When diners at Dairy Hollow House folded back the napkin lining the restaurant breadbasket and found cornbread, there were almost always audible cries of delight, and cornbread stories. (This was one of the moments at which, daily, I began to hear over and over the magic words I began this book with: “Cornbread? I love cornbread!”) Gradually, I believe, the locals who had at first scoffed at us for serving so homey a food in a high-priced restaurant came to see the point. Something like:
Yes, this
is
what we eat, and people are coming here to visit our place, to see what makes us
us
. Yes, cornbread’s what you serve your people, but it’s more than good enough for those high-falutin’ strangers, too … probably a hell of a lot better than what they got at home. Imagine them not knowing cornbread! They finally have sense to appreciate what
we
knew all along!

What we eat develops from the physical and human environments, an inextricable convergence. Every bite, whether we know it or not, is a word in the ongoing story of the world: place, people who live there, choice, accident, history—good and bad, easy and hard. That’s life; that’s food. Love, pride, strong opinions; sustenance, survival; celebration, war and peace, division and healing: this is the true delicious conundrum and communion in every satisfying bite of Southern cornbread, one universal telling of the cornbread gospel.

M
AKES
8
WEDGES

This is the cornbread I served when I owned and ran Dairy Hollow House; it was its single most requested recipe. It is the first Southern food I ever learned to fix and the one that started me on my cornbread journey. I learned how to make it in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, New York, in 1969, when I was very young and living in a brownstone with seven other people. Viola, the soft-spoken lady friend of a kind neighbor, taught it to me. Viola was from Georgia, and it was she who initiated me into baking cornbread in an already-hot skillet.

I’ve served this cornbread to a president (Bill Clinton) and a princess (Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia). Countless people have told me it’s become their house cornbread and signature dish—the one they take to potlucks and serve to company. While I love cornbreads of all kinds, I come back to this one over, and over, again.

Vegetable oil cooking spray

1 cup unbleached white flour

1 cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal

1 tablespoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon baking soda

1¼ cups buttermilk

2 tablespoons sugar

1 egg

¼ cup mild vegetable oil

2 tablespoons butter, or mild vegetable oil

1.
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Spray a 10-inch cast-iron skillet with oil and set aside.

2.
Sift together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl.

3.
In a smaller bowl, stir the baking soda into the buttermilk. Whisk in the sugar, egg, and the ¼ cup oil.

4.
Put the prepared skillet over medium heat, add the butter, and heat until the butter melts and is just starting to sizzle. Tilt the pan to coat the sides and bottom.

5.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and combine them quickly, using as few strokes as possible. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake the cornbread until it is golden brown, about 20 minutes. Let cool for a few moments, and slice into wedges to serve.

M
AKES
8
WEDGES

Everything about this straight-up cornbread—not sweet, not fancy but for its two eggs—points to it being an early creation, not far from sustenance. For that, maybe because of that, it has a purity that is hard to beat, as well as a winning, light texture.

This is adapted from the recipe of Sook Faulk, who gave it, and other family recipes, to her niece Marie Rudisill (Truman Capote’s aunt) in 1946, with “the understanding that [she] would share them with Truman Capote, [her] sister’s child, who had been brought up in Sook’s hometown, Monroeville, Alabama.”

1 tablespoon butter or bacon drippings

2 eggs

2 cups buttermilk

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups stone-ground white cornmeal

1.
Preheat the oven to 450°F. Place the butter or drippings in a 10-inch cast-iron skillet, and place it in the oven.

2.
Combine the eggs and buttermilk in a small bowl or measuring cup, whisking together well with a fork.

3.
In a medium bowl, combine the sugar, salt, baking soda, and cornmeal, stirring well to combine.

4.
Stir the egg mixture into the dry ingredients, beating just until the dry ingredients are moistened, no more.

5.
Pull the skillet from the oven. It should be good and hot, with the fat sizzling. Swirl the pan to coat it. Quickly transfer the batter to the hot skillet and return the skillet to the oven.

6.
Bake until browned and pulling away from the skillet, 20 to 25 minutes. Serve, hot, in wedges from the pan.

M
AKES
6
THIN WEDGES

Pam Anderson was at one time the executive editor of
Cook’s Illustrated
, the magazine that fanatically tests every recipe, and every assumption about that recipe, countless times. In 1998, she published a book called
The Perfect Recipe.
I was curious to see her take on cornbread, since she’d tried using every possible variety of cornmeal, a wide range of fats and cooking methods, and liquids from sour cream to sweet milk to buttermilk.

I’ve adapted her favorite recipe here. Like a spoonbread, it calls for saturating the cornmeal with boiling water before mixing it into a very simple batter. The method gives this bread the simple, straight-up wholesomeness of a pure Southern cornbread, but with a moister crumb.

Vegetable oil cooking spray

1 tablespoon butter

1 cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal

⅓ cup boiling water

1 teaspoon sugar

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¾ cup buttermilk

1 egg

1.
Preheat the oven to 450°F. Spray a 10-inch cast-iron skillet with the oil, add the butter, and place the skillet in the oven.

2.
Place ⅓ cup of the cornmeal in a small, heat-proof bowl and pour the boiling water over it, stirring well with a fork.

3.
Combine the remaining ⅔ cup cornmeal with the sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda in a medium bowl.

4.
Whisk the buttermilk into the moistened cornmeal, then add the egg, beating well. Combine the wet and dry mixtures, stirring until not quite blended.

5.
Take the by-now-very-hot skillet from the oven and pour the melted butter from the skillet into the batter. Stir a few times, until the ingredients are blended, and pour the batter into the hot buttery skillet.

6.
Immediately return the skillet to the oven. Bake the cornbread until it is golden and quite crusty, about 20 minutes. It will pull away from the edges of the skillet more than is usual. Turn the cornbread out on a rack, let it cool for 5 minutes, and then serve, still warm.