The Cornbread Gospels (46 page)

S
ERVES
6
TO
8

“I never met a stuffed cabbage I didn’t like,” proclaims Elizabeth Rozin in her 1999 book,
Crossroads Cooking: The Meeting and Mating of Ethnic Cuisines—From Burma to Texas in 200 Recipes.
This brilliant food historian was one of the first to codify the ways in which almost all dishes on the world’s tables are the result of ethnic crosscurrents. She describes an “eccentric” sweet and sour stuffed cabbage recipe that uses as a base not the common rice, ground meat, or bread crumbs, but mamaliga, Romanian cornmeal mush. (Can’t you just tell how much they love it by that word, mamaliga?)

Elizabeth’s comments put me in mind of one of my own personal cabbage favorites, the rich Russian soup called
s’chi
. S’chi is sweet and sour, utterly delicious, and deeply, satisfyingly warming on a bitter day. What would happen if I slightly thickened s’chi with a little leftover cornbread, instead of serving it with potatoes or kasha as the starchy component? I did, and … wow. The recipe bears grafts of all I’ve mentioned and more, a fine, sturdy hybrid of cuisines. Set a steaming tureen down on your table and taste this lovely, substantial intersection.

Use the darkest, richest vegetable stock you can find for this. As for your sauerkraut, get a natural foods brand in a jar or bag,
never a can. Sauerkraut from cans always has a noticeable metallic taste. But any unembellished cornbread, sweet or not, will work just fine.

Vegetable oil cooking spray

2 tablespoons butter

1 large or 2 medium onions, chopped

1 carrot, scrubbed and diced

4 to 5 garlic cloves, chopped

1½ teaspoons tamari or soy sauce

2 quarts (8 cups) rich, dark vegetable stock

1½ cups fine ribbon-cut green cabbage

1½ cups sauerkraut

1½ cups canned diced tomatoes with their juice

½ cup raisins or diced pitted prunes

1 to 2 tablespoons honey

1 to 2 tablespoons cider vinegar

1 bay leaf

Salt and freshly cracked black pepper

2 wedges cornbread, preferably stale

Sour cream, for garnish (optional)

Fresh sprigs of dill, for garnish (optional)

1.
Spray a 10-inch skillet with oil and set on medium-high heat. Add the butter, and when it melts, add the onions. Sauté over high heat for 5 minutes, then add the carrots, lower the heat, and sauté until the onions are very soft and starting to turn golden, another 5 to 8 minutes. Lower the heat again and add the garlic and tamari. Stirring often, cook for another 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool slightly.

2.
Meanwhile, spray a large, heavy soup pot with oil and add the stock, cabbage, sauerkraut, tomatoes with their juice, raisins or prunes, 1 tablespoon of the honey, 1 tablespoon of the vinegar, the bay leaf, and salt and pepper to taste. Ladle out a little of the stock into the skillet used for the onion mixture and stir and scrape to deglaze the pan. Add the sautéed vegetables and the deglazing liquid to the soup pot. Bring to a boil, turn down the heat to medium low, and gently simmer the soup, half covered, for about 45 minutes. Taste for seasonings, correcting with salt, pepper, honey, and vinegar to get the requisite sweet-sourness, which should be noticeable but not sharp. The dried fruits should have just about melted into the broth by now.

3.
Crumble in the cornbread pieces. Stir very, very well. Cover the soup, turn the heat down even lower, and let the soup gently simmer for another 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4.
When the soup has thickened and you’ve tasted it yet again to achieve the perfect balance of sweet and sour, remove the bay leaf and serve the soup very hot. Dollop each bowlful with sour cream and a sprig of dill, if desired, and sigh with pleasure.

S
ERVES
8
TO
10

“I really think it’s the dressing that does it,” says Patsy Barker, seriously and thoughtfully. “It is the dressing that is so important.” She knows: She is the Patsy of Patsy’s Cornbread Salad, one of the annual, much-anticipated culinary highlights of the National Cornbread Festival in South Pittsburg, Tennessee. There, literal
tons
of it have been dished out, a scoop at a time, to countless grateful cornbread enthusiasts. There is always a line in front of the booth that serves Patsy’s cornbread salad. (Incidentally, that booth is sponsored by Citizen’s Tri-County Bank, where Patsy’s husband, H. Glenn Barker, is chairman. Profits from the booth go directly to the Cornbread Festival itself, creating seed money for the following year’s festival.)

Patsy has never given out her recipe before, and she was reluctant to do it this time, but finally, thankfully, she gave in. She’s not exactly sure of the salad’s origins—“It was one my daughter made that she got from somewhere,” she told me, “and I’ve tinkered with it a little.” She gave it to me anecdotally, beginning “First you make up a skillet of cornbread …” and continuing from there. I’ve put it in conventional recipe format, but I kept some of her tips, comments, and ingredients.

Use any crusty nonsweet all-cornmeal Southern cornbread, such as Truman Capote’s Family’s (
page 13
), Sylvia’s Ozark (
page 18
), or Ronni’s Appalachian (
page 21
).

1 skillet of cornbread

¾ pound bacon

1 cup mayonnaise (“I use Kraft”)

½ cup sweet pickle relish (“I just use Heinz”)

¼ cup juice from sweet pickle relish

1 tablespoon sugar

2 Vidalia or other sweet onions, finely chopped

2 green bell peppers, cored, seeded, and finely chopped

4 to 5 juicy, ripe tomatoes, cut into medium-size chunks

1.
Coarsely crumble the cornbread “into a good big bowl” and let it dry out for a few hours.

2.
Cook the bacon, draining off all excess fat. “You want it cooked real brown and crispy,” Patsy says. When the bacon has cooled, crumble it coarsely and set it aside.

3.
Stir or whisk together the mayo, relish, relish juice, and sugar. That’s your dressing. Set it aside.

4.
When the crumbled cornbread has dried slightly, toss in the onions, peppers, tomatoes, and crumbled bacon. Toss well, so that everything is well distributed.

5.
Spoon the dressing over the top and stir thoroughly. Cover tightly and refrigerate until ready to serve. It can be made up to 24 hours in advance.

I substitute crumbled crisp sautéed smoked tempeh strips for the bacon, and add a teaspoon of hot sauce to the dressing.

My friend Elayne Ross’s version of cornbread salad is semi-Southwestern and mighty good: Substitute 1 can (15 ounces) well-drained pinto beans for the bacon and 1 bunch scallions, chopped, for the Vidalia. Add 2 cups (8 ounces) grated sharp Cheddar cheese and 1 or 2 finely minced jalapeños in addition to the green bell peppers. Her dressing: ½ cup each mayonnaise and yogurt or sour cream, ½ cup sweet pickle relish plus 2 tablespoons juice, and 2 tablespoons smoky barbecue sauce, ideally chipotle barbecue sauce. Sprinkle minced cilantro over the top.

S
ERVES
4
TO
6
AS A HEARTY SIDE DISH
, 4
AS STUFFING FOR A VEGETABLE

A guarantee: A few bites of kush will introduce a whole new comfort food to your repertoire. It is not the prettiest dish you’ll ever see, but everyone who’s sampled it at my table has asked for the recipe, and two of those who did took it home, tried it on their families, and promptly saw it elevated to “Mama, make that kush again” status.

So what is kush? Imagine a thick, moist almost-porridge, with the flavors of stuffing or dressing and a consistency similar to that of polenta or mashed potatoes, with savory bits and bites of sautéed vegetables stirred in—a kind of delicious precursor to commercial “stuffing” that can be made atop the stove, to which it is a distant relative. The ideal cornbread here is one on the dry side, not too sweet, rich, or eggy. Ronni’s Appalachian (
page 21
), Truman Capote’s Family’s (
page 13
), or Pam Anderson’s “Perfect” New South–Style (
page 14
) would all do nicely.

Kush is a great side dish, but to my mind it’s best stuffed in a vegetable. I’ve offered a stuffed tomato version here, and have been known to serve it in a pumpkin … though semantic play demands I also suggest Kush in Cushaw (a sweet winter squash stuffed with kush).

Vegetable oil cooking spray

1 tablespoon mild vegetable oil

½ large onion, chopped

1 celery rib, chopped

4 medium mushrooms, chopped

3 cups crumbled leftover cornbread, ideally stale

1 cup leftover stale coarse bread or biscuit crumbs, preferably whole-grain

2½ cups vegetable or chicken stock, or, if need be, water

3 hard-cooked eggs, peeled and coarsely chopped (optional)

1 teaspoon dried leaf sage (not ground), crumbled, or 1 tablespoon finely minced fresh sage leaf (optional)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1.
Spray a 9- to 10-inch skillet with oil and place over medium-high heat. Add the tablespoon of oil and, when it’s hot, the onions. Sauté for 4 or 5 minutes, stirring, then add the celery and mushrooms, and sauté until the vegetables soften a little, about 4 minutes more. Lower the heat slightly.

2.
Add the cornbread, bread or biscuit crumbs, and the stock or water. Add the stock gradually, as the crumbs absorb it, mashing it into the crumbs with the back of a spoon. Bring the
kush to a slow boil, raising the heat slightly as needed.

3.
Keep stirring. After about 5 minutes, add the eggs, if using. Continue cooking and stirring until the bread absorbs the liquid evenly, softening to a kind of porridge, but with little texture-y nubbins of crumb remaining, another 5 to 7 minutes.

4.
Remove the kush from the stove. Stir in the sage, if using, and salt and pepper to taste.

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Cut the tops off 4 large tomatoes and, using a spoon, scoop out the tomato innards, reserving them for another purpose. Fill the tomatoes with kush, rounding up over the top. Place the stuffed tomatoes in an oil-sprayed baking dish and bake until the kush is crusty on top, 20 minutes. Serve as a hearty dinner, with a beany vegetable soup to start and garlic-sautéed broccoli as an accompaniment.

Stir in the kernels of 2 ears of fresh corn (see Shuck and Jive,
page 49
) along with the seasonings at the last. This enhances the corn taste and texture.