The Cornbread Gospels (7 page)

“If God had meant for cornbread to have sugar in it, he’d have called it cake.”

—M
ARK
T
WAIN

C
ORNBREAD AT
K
WANZAA

Invented in 1966, Kwanzaa is an African American holiday held annually for seven days, beginning each December twenty-sixth. It was started by the often-controversial Ron Karenga, a “cultural nationalist” who served as chair of the Department of Black Studies at California State University at Long Beach from 1987 to 2002 and still teaches there. Part of the movement toward reclaiming and celebrating black identity, in turn part of the Civil Rights and freedom movement, Kwanzaa (“first fruits of the harvest” in Swahili) was created at one of the crests of this ongoing movement’s power, vitality, and energy. Though it was Karenga’s conscious ideological attempt to integrate the diversity of African roots with the need for unity and shared identity, in the nearly forty years that Kwanzaa has been in existence, it has taken on a vigorous life of its own, and is now celebrated by more than thirteen million people worldwide.

Rooted in the first-fruits and harvest festivals that are part of every agrarian culture, and that have been part of African civilization since the days of ancient Egypt and Nubia, Kwanzaa today is family-oriented and often is observed in addition to religious holidays. Like many celebrations that occur around the time of the winter solstice, the year’s shortest day, Kwanzaa punctuates the pending gradual return of daylight with symbolic and literal illumination. (The Ashanti say, beautifully, that solstice is “when the edges of the year meet.”)

On each of the holiday’s seven days, a family member lights a candle from the
kinara,
a seven-branched candelabra, and the family talks about one of seven principles of African American unity. The celebration culminates on December thirty-first with the
Karamu,
a feast. In America,
this abundance of good food often includes not only African preparations, but traditional dishes from the Caribbean, South America, North America … wherever enslaved Africans were taken. Many African Americans incorporate Southern dishes into their feasts, because, as Stephen Johnson of Oakland, California, a longtime devotee of the holiday, explained to the
Pittsburgh Review-Tribune,
“We’re of African descent, but a lot of us don’t cook African food because it hasn’t been passed on to us the way the Southern food has been passed on to us.” Such pass-on dishes include rice and black-eyed peas, collard greens, fried okra, biscuits with coconut and/or sesame seeds, and sweet potato pie. All are popular at Kwanzaa feasts, and they might accompany an African dish like vegetable mafé, a very spicy vegetable stew with a peanut butter and tomato sauce. And of course, cornbread’s appearance is essential.

·M·E·N·U·

A
N
A
BUNDANT
K
WANZAA
K
ARAMU

Salad of Marinated Black-Eyed Peas

*

Greens, Old South Style
or
Greens, New South Style

*

Baked Catfish, Fried Chicken, and/or “Chicken-Fried” Tofu

*

Vegetable Mafé
over Cooked Millet or Cornmeal Mush

*

Candied Sweet Potatoes or Fried Plantains

*

Two Grandmas’ Creamed Corn Cornbread

*

Jessica Harris’s Herbed Cornbread

*

Sesame-Coconut Cornmeal Biscuits for Kwanzaa

*

Fresh Fruit in Season

J
UST
W
HAT
,
E
XACTLY
,
I
S THE
D
IFFERENCE
B
ETWEEN
S
OUTHERN AND
N
ORTHERN
C
ORNBREADS
?

As we prepare to leave the South, passionate about proper cornbread ingredients and technique to the point of near-fanaticism and head to the North, also cornbread-loving but far more open to variations on a theme, it’s worth looking more closely at the as-a-rules of basic Southern and Northern techniques and ingredients.

Just remember … every rule has an exception, as you’ll see.

T
HE
R
ULE
: C
ORNMEAL AND/OR FLOUR
.
Southern
cornbreads often use all cornmeal or mostly cornmeal with just a tiny amount of flour (sometimes as little as a tablespoon), white cornmeal more often than yellow.
Northern
cornbreads generally use half flour, half cornmeal, and occasionally use an even larger percentage of flour to cornmeal; say, 1½ parts flour to ½ part cornmeal. Yellow cornmeal is used more often than white. E
XCEPTIONS TO THE RULE
: In the
South,
most African American cornbreads, as well as some from Virginia, usually contain equal parts flour and cornmeal. And in the
North,
almost all Rhode Island jonnycakes use all cornmeal, preferably whitecap flint cornmeal.

T
HE
R
ULE
: L
IQUID
.
Southern
batters are almost always moistened with buttermilk, though in spoonbreads and a few other cornbreads, the meal is first presoaked with boiling water.
Northern
cornbreads usually call for “sweet milk” (i.e., regular, non-buttermilk milk). E
XCEPTIONS TO THE RULE
: Occasional regional variations both Northern and Southern break the rule; some recipes from both parts combine sweet milk and buttermilk; some forgo milk altogether or partly and use water.

T
HE
R
ULE
: S
UGAR
.
Southern
batters usually have no sugar (or other sweetener), often
emphatically
none. But occasionally just a little is added, “just enough to make it as sweet as sweet corn,” as a gent who ran a sawmill and fixed cars in the Ozark backwoods once told a friend of mine.
Northern
cornbreads, though, are usually quite sweet; ¼ cup to ¾ cup sugar or even more is not uncommon. Other sweeteners, including honey or maple syrup, may also be used. No other difference brings down as much
invective (from the Southern side) as this particular item. E
XCEPTIONS TO THE RULE
: African American Southern cornbreads as well as some Virginia cornbreads are often quite sweet, and almost all Rhode Island jonnycakes are
not
sweetened (and many Ocean State residents are prepared to heap as much scornful invective on their fellow cornbread-sweetening New Englanders as Southerners do).

T
HE
R
ULE
: F
AT
.
Traditionally, bacon drippings and/or butter were the fat of choice in
Southern
cornbreads, as well as in the all-important skillet-heating. Today oil and/or butter are usually used, but, for some, only reluctantly: At one time the smokiness given by bacon fat was an essential prized part of the region’s cornbread. Traditionally,
Northern
cornbreads call for butter, though lard was sometimes used in the old days. Today oil and butter are the usual choice. E
XCEPTIONS TO THE RULE
: In Rhode Island, some fry their jonnycakes in bacon fat. And, in my kitchen (which for thirty-five years was located in the South, but for four has been in the North), I always use Better (see the Pantry,
page 346
).

T
HE
R
ULE
: E
GGS
.
Southern
cornbreads most often have one egg, occasionally two, rarely three. Some Southern cornbreads—usually those intended for crumbling into stews or used in dressing, and in those recipes dating from subsistence times—have
no
eggs. Contemporary
Northern
cornbread always, always has at least one egg, and often two or three. E
XCEPTIONS TO THE RULE
: The
South
’s spoonbreads: usually soufflé-like dishes, to which many eggs are essential. In the
North,
most varieties of Rhode Island jonnycakes are egg-free, as is steamed Boston Brown Bread (
page 62
). (And, referring to an egg as a cackleberry, something you’d expect might be a Southernism, is actually straight from Albert, my old-timer Vermont pal.)

T
HE
R
ULE
: L
EAVENING
.
Southern
cornbreads are most often leavened with a combination of baking soda and baking powder; the soda offsets the acidity of the buttermilk. But most
Northern
cornbreads use just baking powder, with sweet milk obviating the need for soda. E
XCEPTIONS TO THE RULE
:
Southern
spoonbreads, in essence souflées, are leavened by beaten egg whites.

T
HE
R
ULE
: B
AKING DISH AND METHOD
.
Southern
cornbreads are almost always baked in a sizzling-hot round cast-iron skillet, occasionally a cornstick pan. You see a cornbread muffin not too often in the South.
Northern
cornbread batter goes into a room-temperature square pan or casserole dish, and muffins are made much more often than in the South. E
XCEPTIONS TO THE RULE
: Some
Southern
cornbreads, notably those from Virginia, are baked in square pans or casserole dishes. And in the
North,
a few very old recipes call for being baked in
a “spider,” a three-legged elevated cast-iron skillet with high sides. Traditionally the spider’s legs were set directly in a fire that had burned down to hot coals, so the cornbread baked just above it.

T
HE
R
ULE
: C
ULTURAL APOCRYPHA
.
Until quite recently (the 1930s) cornbread served as
the
daily bread in the
South,
with biscuits running second. During times of poverty, cornbread was subsistence food. Southerners have a strong, almost compulsive emotional attachment to cornbread; types of cornbread and how one makes it serve as a regional badge of identity. In the
North,
cornbread is and was much more occasionally served. In the past homemade daily breads were likely to be yeast-risen wheat or “thirded” breads (see
page 42
), or muffins. Cornbread has always been more in the line of a treat, something special. While Northerners have strong affection for cornbread and enjoy it, it has little to do with identity. E
XCEPTIONS TO THE RULE
: One partially cornmeal-based bread made a regular appearance on
Northern
tables: Boston Brown Bread, a very moist, sweet, steamed bread that always contains a good percentage of cornmeal (see
page 62
) was often served weekly. Such bread would be incomprehensible in the South.

T
HE
R
ULE
: H
OW YOU CUT AND SERVE IT
.
Most often
Southern
cornbreads are served in wedges, like a pie, served hot, straight from the skillet (unless baked in cornstick pans or as muffins). It’s a daily bread, also used as the basis for dressing, and crumbled directly into stews, soups, and chilies. It’s a classic accompaniment to slow-cooked greens and/or beans or black-eyed peas. An especially
Southern
serving method: Crumbled non-sweet classic cornmeal-only cornbread is placed in a glass, topped with either buttermilk or sweet milk, and eaten with a spoon. In the
North,
expect cornbread in squares or muffins, warm or at room temperature. It’s used as a specialty bread, a snack, often an after-school snack, not a daily bread, and is frequently served with butter and honey or jam. E
XCEPTIONS TO THE RULE
:
Southern
corn pones are formed freehand and baked in patties, often served with vegetables on the side (especially cabbage). The
Northern
Boston Brown Bread, already mentioned above, is typically steamed in a cylinder (such as a coffee can), sliced crosswise in thick circles, and served alongside classic sweet, tangy baked beans.