The Cornbread Gospels (19 page)
Read The Cornbread Gospels Online
Authors: Crescent Dragonwagon
C
ORNBREAD IN
C
ORFU
According to Diane Kochilas, perhaps the world’s foremost authority on regional Greek cuisine, an extremely simple cornbread called
barbarella
was once a staple on the island of Corfu. You won’t find a recipe for it because there isn’t one: The cornmeal was boiled in water to become mush, then patted into thin cakes and baked (on a stone, in a wood-burning oven). It was served, warm, with an abundance of wild greens (watercress, mustard, nettle, dandelion, poppy, and more) sautéed with onions, olive oil, and a bit of paprika or chile and a slice of feta cheese. If there was a shortage of oil to sauté with, the greens might be steamed and kneaded right into the cooked cornmeal before it was baked. Until the infusion of prosperity brought by late twentieth-century tourism, Corfiot peasants subsisted on this barbarella. The bread received its name due to the mistaken belief that corn originated in Africa’s Barbary Coast. (A very similar bread called
lipano
was eaten in northwestern Greece as well as in the neighboring southern Albania.)
While beating the bushes to find out exactly what barbarella was, I did learn from another pan pal, the extraordinarily knowledgeable Aglaia Kremezi, about the sweet Greek cornbread bobota, especially popular in Thessaly. Contemporary, as different from
barbarella
as day from night,
bobota
is served as a dessert or coffee cake, infused with a delicious, sticky, flavored syrup, much like Greek nut cakes (revani) or even baklava. My version of Aglaia’s generously shared recipe, from her mother-in-law, Athanasia Moraitis, appears on
page 105
.
ORN
T
HINBREAD WITH
O
LIVES
, W
ALNUTS
, F
ETA, AND
S
UN-DRIED
T
OMATOES
S
ERVES
6
TO
8
When I decided to try pairing some of the big, bold, assertive salty-savory tastes of the Mediterranean with cornbread, I was picturing a thin cornbread with crispy-crusty edges. I wound up with this addictively good, highly unusual flat loaf, contrasting surprises in every bite: creamy-salty feta, chewy-unctuous sun-dried tomatoes, crunchy walnuts (decidedly sweet in counterpoint to the other saltinesses), bitter-salty oil-cured olives. Try it as part of an appetizer spread, as a starter in its own right, or served with a nice beany soup, or one in the minestrone line, flavored with basil, tomatoes, and vegetables. Or accompany it with a great big summer salad—butter lettuce from the garden, scallions, and red ripe tomatoes dressed with a lemon-y, garlicky viniagrette. This bread with such a salad is a fine supper indeed.
Vegetable oil cooking spray
1 cup unbleached white flour
1 cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal
1 tablespoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
2 teaspoons sugar
2 tablespoons oil from oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes
3 tablespoons diced oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes
¼ cup pitted dry oil-and-salt-cured black olives (pulled into pieces as you pit them)
½ cup toasted walnuts, chopped
1 scant cup (4 ounces) feta cheese, crumbled
1.
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Spray a 15-by-11-by-1¼-inch jelly-roll pan with oil, and set aside.
2.
Sift together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl.
3.
Pour the olive oil into the prepared pan, and set the pan in the oven to heat.
4.
Whisk together the buttermilk, ½ cup water, the egg, sugar, and the oil from the sun-dried tomatoes in a smaller bowl.
5.
Pour the buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture. The batter will be thinner than usual; whisk it a few times to smooth out the larger lumps. Then stir in the sun-dried tomatoes, olives, and walnuts, with just a few more strokes.
6.
Carefully remove the hot pan from the oven. With a basting brush, distribute the hot olive oil more or less evenly over the pan. Scrape the batter into it, spreading it and patching in any spots where the pan shows through, making a thin, flat loaf. Sprinkle with the feta.
7.
Bake until both the bread and feta are golden brown, the loaf edges especially so but not burned, 15 to 20 minutes. Let cool for a few moments. Serve warm or at room temperature, but not cold.
·M·E·N·U·
M
EZZE
M
ARVELOUS
: P
ATMOS IN
P
UTNEY
Corn Thinbread with Olives, Walnuts, Feta and Sun-dried Tomatoes
*
White Beans with Minced Celery, Parsley, Oregano, Lemon, Olive Oil, Garlic, and Salt
*
Yellow and Red Cherry Tomatoes in a Red-Leaf Lettuce–Lined Basket
*
Marinated Steamed Artichokes, Split in Half and Finished on the Grill
*
Steamed Beets Tossed with Lemon, Olive Oil, Tamari and a Touch of Honey
C
ROSS
-C
ULTURAL
C
ORNBREAD
Cornbreads almost identical to the American corn pone and hoecake are served daily in the Caucasus, the western part of the republic of Georgia, and also in the far north of India, in the Punjab. In Georgia, they’re
mchadi
—unleavened corn cakes shaped into ovals (not rounds, like our pones), and baked on top of the fire on a
ketsi,
a clay griddle (of course, top-of-the-fire baking was the way it was first done in America, too). And in the Punjab, they’re makki ki roti. Again, the dough is almost identical, but the cakes, griddled on a
tawa,
are rolled out more thinly (using a combination of meal-dusted hands and a rolling pin called a
belan
), to form a round cake slightly smaller in circumference than a corn tortilla. This traditional method is tricky, so I use my friend Raghavan Iyer’s recipe for part cornmeal–part flour makki ki roti. Sometimes makki ki roti are plain, sometimes they’re jazzed up with grated radish and/or green chile and minced cilantro added to the dough.
What are these various traveling pones served with? In the mchadi-loving parts of Georgia they accompany unflavored yogurt, cheese, and just plain butter; beans; and vegetable or meat stews. Farther to the south and east, the Punjab’s makki ki roti eaters, too, enjoy their corn cakes with a variety of foods. But one dish is de rigueur as an accompaniment: sarson ka saag, a slow-cooked, extravagantly spiced mixture of mustard greens (see
page 294
).
How’d corn get to Georgia and India in the first place? Portuguese sailors took it there thirty or forty years after 1492 (when Columbus sailed the ocean blue).
AKKI
K
I
R
OTI
(I
NDIAN
C
ORN
G
RIDDLE
C
AKES
)
M
AKES
10
GRIDDLE CAKES
When I learned from Mr. Panseer, a North Indian airport limo driver, that Punjabis eat cornbread and greens (usually saag, see
page 294
), I, being the dyed-in-the-wool Southern girl I then was, about fell over. There are as many variations on makki ki roti as there are Punjabis. Sometimes they are made simply, as an accompaniment to something spicy; at other times, the breads are themselves spiced, with ginger, chiles, fresh cilantro, or all of these. And while in the north they are made with just cornmeal, in central India and Mumbai (Bombay) you’ll find them made with a mixture of cornmeal or puréed fresh corn and
atta
, a low-protein wheat flour more usually used for making
chapattis
.
If you don’t want to run out to your local Indian food store for atta, you can combine equal amounts of whole wheat flour, unbleached all-purpose white flour, and white cake or pastry flour. (If you do go, though, you can pick up some commercially made ghee—clarified butter—while you’re there.) I have also used half whole wheat pastry flour and half unbleached white instead of atta with good results.
1 cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal
1 cup atta or chapatti flour (see
headnote
)
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons melted butter, ghee, or mild vegetable oil
About ½ cup warm water
A little additional butter, as needed (optional but good)
1.
Place the cornmeal, flour, salt, and butter in a medium bowl. Rub this combination between your hands to disperse the fat. The mixture should have the texture of bread crumbs.
2.
Add the warm water, drizzling in a few tablespoons at a time, and mix with your fingers. Keep working the flour-cornmeal mixture until you’ve formed a stiff dough. Knead this for 2 minutes (the dough will be grainy and dry).
3.
Divide the dough into 10 equal pieces, shaping each into a round. Cover the rounds with a clean, slightly damp towel.
4.
Heat a heavy nonstick skillet over medium heat. Working with one dough round at a time, carefully roll the rotis out on a very lightly floured board with a floured rolling pin to make circular breads, 4 to 5 inches across and about ¼ inch thick. You can try rolling out the rotis between two sheets of wax paper or heavy plastic, such as a cut-open zip-top bag.
5.
Working with a few rounds at a time, place the rotis carefully in the hot pan, and let them cook until golden brown spots appear underneath the bread, 1 to 2 minutes. Flip the rotis over and repeat. Then brush the tops of the rotis lightly with just a bit of butter, flip them over a second time, and let them cook for about 10 seconds. Butter and flip one more time, for about 10 seconds more.
6.
Remove the rotis from the skillet as they finish, and wrap them in towels or foil to keep warm.
ARIATIONS
:
S
PICED
M
AKKI
K
I
R
OTI
Buzz together in a food processor with a few tablespoons of warm spring water about 1 tablespoon coarsely chopped ginger; ½ onion, chopped; 2 garlic cloves, smashed or pressed; and, if you like, a green chile or two and 2 tablespoons of fresh cilantro. Pulse-chop to make a textured purée, and stir this into the cornmeal-flour-butter mix. Proceed as directed, bearing in mind that you will probably need
little or no water to bring the dough together, given the water in the onion mixture.
RESH
C
ORN
M
AKKI
K
I
R
OTI
Delicious, but trickier to work with than the original Mumbai style. In a food processor buzz together 1½ cups fresh corn kernels (cut from 3 ears of fresh corn; see Shuck and Jive,
page 49
) with ½ teaspoon salt and 1 tablespoon butter, pausing to scrape down the sides with a spatula, until you’ve formed a slightly textured purée. Place 1 cup atta or equivalent flour mixture in a medium bowl, and stir the corn purée into it. Knead as directed in step 2, keeping in mind that you will likely need little to no water to bring the dough together, then proceed with the remainder of the recipe.
“I scarcely had time to wonder what would happen next, before Narayan appeared, looking pleased, carrying in one hand a tray of food, and in the other, a jug of drinking water. He spoke no English, merely adding to his very Sanskritized Hindi the kind of gestures that would help me understand him. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘are vegetables, sweet peppers, cream custard, and hard corn-cakes. Mataji has cooked them …’”
—L
IZELLE
R
EYMOND
,
My Life with a Brahmin Family
EALIEBROD
(S
OUTH
A
FRICAN
S
TEAMED
F
RESH
C
ORNBREAD
)
S
ERVES
6
TO
8
In parts of the world where ovens are not common, steamed breads often make an appearance. One of those places is South India, where there’s a type of steamed bread made mostly of coconut and just a bit of flour. Steaming is also used in many parts of the African continent.
This traditional Zulu bread, widely accepted by the Boer settlers in southern Africa, folds in fresh corn (called mealies) with ample amounts of flour and a little cornmeal. It has no added fat. An extremely moist, dense bread, mealiebrod is an unusual loaf, but, especially to those who grew up on it, it is addictive. South Africans today eat it as a snack, with butter and jam, or as a breakfast bread.
For instructions on steam cooking, see Steam On,
pages 64
–
66
.