The Cornbread Gospels (14 page)
Read The Cornbread Gospels Online
Authors: Crescent Dragonwagon
5.
By this time the onions should be soft, and the oven nice and hot. Remove the skillet from the stove and scrape the onions into the bowl with the beans. Add the remaining vegetable oil to the skillet, and place the skillet—containing only the oil—in the oven.
6.
Wait a minute or so, until the skillet gets good and hot; the oil should be almost smoking. Then, working quickly, stir together
the cornmeal mixture and the buttermilk mixture until barely combined. Stir in the bean mixture with just a couple of strokes. Carefully remove the hot skillet from the oven. Pour the hot oil from the skillet into the batter and stir into the batter briefly. Place the hot skillet down on your stovetop or other heatproof surface, and transfer the batter into the skillet. Pop the whole thing into the oven.
7.
Let bake for 20 minutes, then carefully pull the cornbread out of the oven. Sprinkle it with the cheese and lower the temperature to 350°F. Let the cornbread bake until firm and golden, another 20 to 25 minutes. Let stand in the pan for at least 10 minutes before cutting it, otherwise it will fall apart on you.
ONORAN
S
KILLET
C
ORNBREAD WITH
M
ESQUITE
M
EAL
M
AKES
8
WEDGES
Think of mesquite at all, and you probably think of mesquite-grilled something-or-other. But this unprepossessing tree (a member of the locust family, like carob, or Saint John’s bread) yields much greater culinary treasure: its long brown seed pods, which, when ripe, can be ground to make a flourlike meal. Mesquite meal is almost stunningly delicious, as well as nutrient-rich. Quite sweet (though low on the glycemic index), relatively high in protein, it’s been used by natives of vast parts of the Southwest and Central Americas. I guarantee you have never tasted anything quite like it: Rich, haunting undernotes, a bit nutty, yet also reminiscent of chocolate and cinnamon, it’s a buff-brown colored, slightly granular flour (in short, a meal). It has become one of my favorite unusual ingredients to play with. (For more information, see the Pantry,
page 355
.)
Mesquite meal makes an already good, more-or-less classic skillet cornbread that much more delicioso. To purchase this flavorful flour, go to www.cocinadevega.com.
1 tablespoon butter or bacon drippings
2 eggs
2 cups buttermilk
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1¼ cups stone-ground blue or yellow cornmeal
½ cup mesquite meal
3 tablespoons unbleached white or whole wheat pastry flour
1.
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Put the butter or bacon 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. Combine the sugar, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cornmeal, mesquite meal, and flour in a medium bowl.
3.
Stir the egg mixture into the dry ingredients, beating with a whisk until the dry ingredients are moistened and incorporated. Do not overbeat. The batter will be on the thin side.
4.
Pull the skillet from the oven. It should be good and hot, with the fat sizzling. Quickly transfer the batter to the hot skillet, and return the skillet to the oven.
5.
Bake until firm, fragrant, and browned, 20 to 25 minutes. Serve in wedges from the pan.
“If all we had were mesquites,
we’d still have roosts for birds,
holes for bugs, flowers for bees.
We’d still have furniture,
fence posts, and fires,
coffee and flour and jelly.
The past would still have
its wagon wheels, spokes,
gumdrops and glue.
The future would be sure
with places for kids to climb,
and rest for all in dappled shade.”
—J
AN
E
PTON
S
EALE
,
“I
N
P
RAISE OF
M
ESQUITES,”
WWW.PRAIRIEPOETRY.ORG
P
IKI
: F
OOD OF
P
EACEABLE
P
EOPLE
One bite of piki, its gossamer-thin, shatteringly fragile blue-gray rolled layers—crisp and then instantly tender in your mouth, full of grainy corn flavor yet so light and delicate the word
bread
seems not to apply—and you know you are eating something quite unlike anything else; something almost otherworldly. But piki is and isn’t just food, just as it’s wholly of this world yet also spiritual. This old dish—Hopis have been making piki since at least 1,500 years before the birth of Christ—is life’s connective tissue for this venerable lineage of humanity, whose name means “the peaceable people.” Piki is one reason this lineage has continued unbroken for so long. It links here-and-now with past and future, generations before with generations to come. Piki, its mysterious blue-gray color deepened by the use of culinary ash, is both everyday food and feast food. For the former, the thin batter-breads are formed into slightly more sturdy rolls, about ten to twelve inches long and two inches wide. These are eaten not with the bowl-scraping roughness we use for bread or tortillas (piki are far too delicate) but as an accompaniment to stews. For special feasts, celebrations, and ceremonies, the dough is made into folded piki, each about eight inches square.
Long before piki is rolled or folded, before the batter is even mixed up, the process begins: with a piki stone. Some piki stones, usually about three feet long by two feet wide and always of dense, flat basaltic or volcanic rock, have been in families for years.
Corn, the primary crop raised by these great agriculturalists, is so much at the center of Hopi life, one might even say it
is
life. Blue cornmeal is
the first solid food to cross the lips of infants at their clan-naming ceremony. A special, slow-cooked sweetened moist corn cake is served when girls reach puberty. In traditional Hopi weddings, corn plays countless roles, serving as the main ingredient in most of the feasts that take place in the week-long celebration. Corn is also dower-price (paid to the groom’s family, for in this matrilineal culture, he will leave them and become part of his bride’s family), proving ground (the bride shows that she’s worthy of having her groom’s birth family give him up, by spending up to four days hand-grinding corn at her mother-in-law’s home), ceremonial nourishment (the bride’s family brings piki to the groom’s family, to help sustain them as they weave the wedding clothes), and makeup (the night before the actual vows, the bride’s family gently powders her face and arms with fine cornmeal while she holds dried corn ears in her hands). And when the bride finally approaches her husband, on the wedding day itself, she carries a basket of blue corn meal, wrapped in a cloth. It should not surprise us, then, to learn that at the last of life’s great thresholds, ears of corn accompany the body to its final rest. And so does piki, to nourish and sustain the deceased as they travel into the spirit world.
Taste this remarkable, ethereally light bread, by visiting www.hopimarket.com. Click on “unique crafts.” There you will find piki. You can call 520-737-9434 and talk to Melcina (she prefers to be called Cina) Nutumya, who is a full Hopi of the Butterfly clan. She makes and ships the bread to order, each roll carefully wrapped in film and light as air.
In fact, when my box of piki arrived from Cina by express mail, Pat, of my Vermont post office, handed it to me, saying, “Looks like someone sent you an empty box.” Piki, that lightweight, is strong enough to bind a culture that has outlasted the fall of the Roman Empire and is still quietly going about its business.
OPPER
W
YND
C
HIPOTLE
C
ORNBREAD
M
AKES
9
SQUARES
From the CopperWynd Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona, this cornbread is a fine, spicy, moist classic Southwestern–style cornbread in the best border cuisine tradition: hot with canned chipotles in adobo, chunky with whole corn kernels, sugar-sweetened and buttery rich, mellowed and moistened by buttermilk. It’s awfully good along with any sweet-smoky-savory beans, but it’s de rigueur for the CopperWynd Chocolate Bread Pudding on
page 332
. Being the whole-grainy girl that I am, I like substituting whole wheat pastry flour for the unbleached white.
Vegetable oil cooking spray
1 cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal
1 cup unbleached white flour
⅓ cup sugar
1½ teaspoons baking powder ½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1¼ cups buttermilk
⅓ cup diced canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, sauce included (remove any tough stems)
¼ cup melted butter
Kernels cut from 1 ear of fresh corn (½ cup; see Shuck and Jive,
page 49
), or ½ cup frozen corn kernels, measured and thawed
1.
Preheat the oven to 425°F. Spray a 9-inch square pan well with oil.
2.
Whisk the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl, combining well.
3.
Beat together the eggs, buttermilk, chipotles, and melted butter in a separate bowl.
4.
Combine the wet and dry mixtures, stirring until just combined, then add the corn with a couple of stirs.
5.
Into the pan goes the batter, and then into the oven goes the pan. Bake the cornbread until it is pale golden, with its edges pulling away from the side of the pan, about 15 minutes. Serve warm if accompanying an entrée.
·M·E·N·U·
B
RIGHT
S
UPPER FOR
A
G
RAY
N
OVEMBER
N
IGHT
Mesclun or Baby Greens Salad with Mustard Vinaigrette
*
Uncannily Good Santa Fe–Style Quick Green Chile Soup-Stew
*
“Shortcake” of Savory Onion-Topped Cornbread
*
Dark, Extra-Gingery Gingerbread, with Darra’s Hot Citrus Sauce
HORTCAKE
”
OF
S
AVORY
O
NION
-T
OPPED
C
ORNBREAD
M
AKES
6
LARGE WEDGES
Marilyn Kennedy from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, sent me her cornbread recipe, which is certainly not your typical Southwestern green chile cornbread. It’s herb-scented and cheese-accented, something of a mix of savory bread pudding, cornbread, and shortcake. I’ve adapted it here.
Vegetable oil cooking spray
2 tablespoons butter
2 large onions, chopped (to equal about 2½ cups)
1 cup (8 ounces) full-fat or reduced-fat (not fat-free) sour cream
2 teaspoons cornstarch
¾ cup (3 ounces) shredded extra-sharp Cheddar cheese
1½ cups self-rising cornmeal (see Pantry,
page 350
)
2 tablespoons sugar
¼ teaspoon dried dillweed
2 eggs
1 can (8.34 ounces) creamed corn (see Pantry,
page 351
)
⅓ cup milk
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
⅛ teaspoon Tabasco or other prepared hot sauce
1.
Preheat the oven to 400°F.
2.
Place a large nonstick or oil-sprayed skillet over medium heat. Add the butter and when it
has started sizzling, add the onions. Sauté until softened, translucent, and almost limp, 5 to 7 minutes. Remove from the heat and let the onions cool slightly.
3.
Meanwhile, whisk together the sour cream and cornstarch in a small bowl or measuring cup. Stir in ¼ cup of the Cheddar cheese, and the slightly cooled sautéed onions.