Cornbread, Southern Style

Southern style cornbread is savory, not sweet and is made mostly from cornmeal with little or no flour.  Yankee cornbread is sweet and with the addition of flour, a finer texture, more like a cake like than cornbread.  Isn’t it funny how the South loves copious amounts of sugar in everything except cornbread?  Southern cornbread is flavored with bacon grease and is cooked in a cast iron skillet.  You see, corn grows readily in the South while wheat just won’t take the South’s heat and humidity.  There's no better source to understand these changes than Glenn Roberts of Anson Mills in Columbia, South Carolina.

During the 19th century, Roberts says, toll milling was the way most farm families got the meal for their cornbread. Farmers took their own corn to the local mill and had it ground into enough cornmeal for their families, leaving behind some behind as a toll to pay the miller. "With toll milling, it was three bags in, three bags out," Roberts explains. "A person could walk or mule in with three bags, take three bags home, and still get chores done."

The mills were typically water-powered and used large millstones to grind the corn. Starting around 1900, however, new "roller mills" using cylindrical steel rollers began to be introduced in the South. Large milling companies set up roller operations in the towns and cities and began taking business away from the smaller toll mills out in the countryside. "The bottom line is they went off stone milling because the economies didn't make sense," Roberts says, "which is why stone milling collapsed after the Depression."

Unlike stone mills, steel roller mills eliminate much of the corn kernel, including the germ; doing so makes the corn shelf stable but also robs it of much flavor and nutrition. The friction of steel rolling generates a lot of heat, too, which further erodes corn's natural flavor. Perhaps the most significant difference, though, is the size of the resulting meal.

"If you're toll milling," Roberts says, "you're using one screen. It's just like a backdoor screen. If you put the grits onto that screen and shake it, coarse cornmeal is going to fall through. The diverse particle size in that cornmeal is stunning when compared to a [steel] roller mill."

When cornmeal's texture changed, cooks had to adjust their recipes. "There's a certain minimum particle size required to react with chemical leaven," Roberts says. "If you are using [meal from a roller mill] you're not going to get nearly the lift. You get a crumbly texture, and you need to augment the bread with wheat flour, or you're getting cake."

The change from stone to steel milling is likely what prompted cooks to start putting sugar in their cornbread, too. In the old days, Southerners typically ground their meal from varieties known as dent corn, so called because there's a dent in the top of each kernel. The corn was hard and dry when it was milled, since it had been "field ripened" by being left in the field and allowed to dry completely.

High-volume steel millers started using corn harvested unripe and dried with forced air, which had less sweetness and corny flavor than its field-ripened counterpart. "You put sugar in the cornmeal because you are not working with brix corn," Roberts says, using the trade term for sugar content. "There's no reason to add sugar if you have good corn."

Ingredients:

2 cups white Cornmeal, stone ground if possible

1 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 tsp Salt

1 Tbsp Sugar

1/2 stick Butter, melted

2 Eggs, beaten

1 1/4 cups Whole Buttermilk

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Grease a cast iron skillet well with bacon drippings and place over burner to heat. You can melt more than you really need and pour the extra into the batter for flavor.

Melt the butter.  Stir the dry ingredients together to mix well.  Add remaining ingredients all at once and stir only to wet the dry ingredients.  A few lumps are OK.  

Pour into sizzling hot skillet and place in oven.  Bake for 20-25 minutes or top is golden brown.   Allow to cool a little before cutting. 

Use a handle mitt or cool with damp cloth.  It’s easy to forget that handle is over 300 degrees, especially for non cooks.

Chocolate Pie

Mom made these regularly when I was growing up.  She never measured anything which made writing it down difficult.  Sometimes they turned out a little sweeter or a little more chocolately but they were always delicious and the latest pie in hand always seemed the best.  

Ingredients:

2 cups Sugar

1/3 cup all purpose Flour

5 Egg Yolks – save whites for meringue

Pinch of Salt

1 cup Cocoa

4 cups Whole Milk

2 Deep Dish Pie Crusts

Directions:

Bake the pie crusts as directed.
Mix dry ingredients to remove any lumps.  Add one cup milk and whisk to thoroughly incorporate then add the rest.  Cook over medium high heat until boils and has thickened.

Meringue:

5 Egg Whites

1 tsp Water

Pinch Salt

¼ teaspoon Cream of Tartar

4 Tablespoons Sugar

2 Tablespoons Powdered Sugar

Directions:

Combine first four ingredients and beat until soft peaks form.   Continue beating on high and gradually add sugars until stiff peaks form.  Fill pie shells and cover with meringue while filling is still hot.  Be sure meringue is in contact with crust.  Bake till meringue is golden brown.

Chicken and Dumplings

Ingredients:

3 to 4 lb. Chicken (whole)

2 Quarts Water

1Tbsp Celery Salt

1/4 tsp Fresh ground pepper

Dumplings:

3 Cups All-purpose flour

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Baking Powder

3/4 tsp Salt

3 Tbsp Butter

1 Cup Buttermilk

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 90 minutes

Preparation:

Place chicken in a Dutch oven or large kettle; add water and salt. Bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat and simmer 1 hour or until tender.  While the chicken cooks, combine flour, soda and salt; cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add buttermilk, stirring with a fork until dry ingredients are moistened; adding a little more if dough won’t hold together.  Turn dough out onto a well-floured surface, and knead lightly 4 or 5 times.  Just like biscuits, the more you work dough, the tougher it will become.  Roll dough to 1/4-inch thickness or a little thinner. Cut dough into 1-inch pieces.  I have found using a pizza cutter is the easiest way to do this.  Drop dough, a few pieces at a time, into boiling broth, carefully stirring after each addition so they don’t stick together.  Add leftover flour from rolling or fresh flour to thicken to the desired consistency.  Reduce heat to medium-low, and cook 10 minutes stirring occasionally.  
Debone the chicken, cutting it into bite size pieces and add back to the mixture.  Add pepper and adjust seasoning to taste.  Simmer until chicken comes back up to temperature. 
I now add the pepper close to the end of cooking because I prefer the bright taste of fresh ground pepper.  Pepper that has simmered for hours has an unpleasant bitter taste and smell.  Simmer some pepper in water a few hours and taste it.  You will agree.

Awesome Coconut Cake

 

At Shubox Cafe, this dessert is known as Awesome Coconut Cake, aptly named by one of the cafe's best customers. To make this recipe, you'll need one 15-ounce can of sweetened cream of coconut.

Ingredients

2 3/4 cups unbleached all purpose Flour

1 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp Salt

1 3/4 cups Sugar

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted Butter, room temperature

1 cup canned sweetened Cream of Coconut (such as Coco López)*

4 large Eggs, separated

1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

1 cup Buttermilk

Pinch of Salt

Sweetened Shredded Coconut

*Canned sweetened cream of coconut is available in the liquor section of most supermarkets nationwide.  It will need to be stirred in a separate bowl before using.

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour two 9-inch-diameter cake pans with 2-inch-high sides.

Using clean dry beaters, beat egg whites with pinch of salt in a large bowl until stiff but not dry.

Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt in medium bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat sugar, butter and sweetened cream of coconut in large bowl until fluffy. Beat in egg yolks and vanilla extract. On low speed, beat in dry ingredients and then buttermilk, each just until blended.

Fold beaten egg whites into batter.

Divide cake batter between prepared pans. Bake cakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Cool cakes in pans on rack 10 minutes. Run small sharp knife around pan sides to loosen cakes. Turn cakes out onto racks and cool completely.

Place one cake layer on a cake plate. Spread 1 cup Cream Cheese Frosting over cake layer. Top with second cake layer. Spread remaining frosting over top and sides of cake. Sprinkle  coconut over cake, gently pressing into sides to adhere.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients

1 (8-ounce) package Philadelphia-brand cream cheese, room temperature

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature

4 oz extra virgin coconut oil

1 pound powdered sugar

1/3 cup canned sweetened cream of coconut (such as Coco López)*

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation

Beat cream cheese, butter and coconut oil in medium bowl until fluffy. Add sugar, sweetened cream of coconut and vanilla extract and beat until well blended.

From: http://www.epicurious.com

Almond Orange Biscotti

 

I have made a lot of biscotti that was so hard it could only be eaten after a good soak in hot tea or coffee.  Though that may be the way biscotti should be, I prefer mine to crunch a little yet still be able to eat it without soaking.  This is the latest in the quest for my ideal biscotti.  The butter adds a rich flavor and helps keep the biscotti soft.  I run the almonds through a food processor until they are about the size of coarse corn meal. This helps keep it tender by preventing the gluten from forming long chains.  Finally, this is more like a cookie than yeast bread so no kneading; simply mix as little as possible to get to come together.  The more you work the dough, the tougher it will become. 

Ingredients:

3 1/4 cups unbleached, all purpose Flour
1 Tbsp Baking Powder
1/3 tsp Salt
1 1/2 cups Sugar
1 stick, (8 tablespoons) unsalted Butter, melted

1/4 cup Canola Oil
3 large Eggs
1 Tbsp Vanilla extract
Zest of 1 Orange

1 tsp Almond extract
4 ozs Almond meal

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°F.  Whisk flour, baking powder and salt together in a medium bowl.  Mix sugar, melted butter, eggs, vanilla extract, almond extract and orange zest in large bowl. Add flour mixture to wet mixture and stir until blended.
This is sticky dough and requires a well floured work area and hands to prevent sticking to everything.  Divide dough in half. Shape each half into a 2 1/2-inch-wide log and place on cookie sheet.
Bake logs until golden brown, 30-35 minutes, and a toothpick comes out clean.  Allow the logs to cool, about 20 minutes but don’t turn the oven off.   
Transfer logs to cutting board. Using a serrated knife, cut logs on diagonal into 1/2-inch-wide slices. Arrange slices, cut side down, back on the cookie sheet. Bake 10 minutes. Turn biscotti over; bake until just beginning to color, about 8 minutes. Transfer to rack and cool before storing.   This usually makes about 3 dozen and should keep several weeks, though mine never stay around long enough to find out.