Ok, so I guess I'm an Okie now--or at least almost.
I worked for a long time to find a recipe for cornbread that Bobby (the true Okie) loves--and he does love cornbread! I mean it couldn't be sweet--then it's cornbread cake--and it had to have a good corn taste. So, I worked for a long time and tried many recipes--some were ok, others were not. I came across a recipe for simple (unadulterated) cornbread by Paula Deen. Well, why not? It might be just the thing.
About that time, I also got some corn (popcorn) and put it through my grain mill and made my own cornmeal. (One thing about this "new" cornmeal is that it is deep golden, unlike most pale yellow cornmeals I have bought before.) Bobby had mentioned that he loves the corner pieces because of the crusty edges on them.
Recently, Bobby found a really nice baking pan for brownies (it's a Wilton)--it has 12 squares--kind of like cupcake pan for square cupcakes. All the pieces have four corners! It's really heavy and I love this pan. Well, I put Paula's recipe together with some ideas of my own (I added some chopped chilis, creamed corn and shredded cheddar cheese) and put it in the oven. So after he had tried the cornbread he announced that I had done it, and it was the best cornbread he had ever eaten. Really.
After we had finished eating our beans and cornbread, he announced that the only way it could have been better would have been to have fried potatoes with it. If he hadn't said that I would never have thought of it, because, you just don't have potatoes and beans in the same meal--super high carbohydrates--it just isn't done--at least not by me. So, tonight, I made his cornbread (this time I left out the creamed corn because I thought the corners would be a little crustier and it worked!), cooked a pot of beans and fried up some potatoes and onions.
Here's the thing: as I was cutting up the onion, I had a flashback to when we were little and Mother and Daddy hadn't been married very long. Daddy fixed us beans and fried potatoes! And we loved it! Remember, Grammy wasn't much of a cook--hated cooking--and as it turned out, Daddy was pretty good. So, I guess beans and fried potatoes with cornbread isn't necessarily an Okie thing but maybe a country thing, because Grampy was raised in a rural environment.
Look at me, I'm countrified!
I really like cornbread baked with milled popcorn. I don't know if I can go back to the regular cornmeal from the store. It's more crispy and crunchy around the edges this way and I really like the texture. I don't add extra stuff to my cornbread though - I like it simple and un-messed with.
ReplyDeletePotatoes, beans and cornbread does sound like kind of a strange dinner. Whatever works though.