Sunday, July 14, 2013

Cornbread - the real Staff of Life

Last night was a Pinterest kinda night.  I've made these recipes before but thought I would share with you.  If you are like me  you are always looking for new recipes to add to your repertoire.  I give you Irish Stew with Mashed Potatoes and Firehouse Cornbread

Cornbread is a funny thing.  I grew up on beans, cornbread, mashed potatoes, traditional Southern foods.  Mama's cornbread was simple and dry.  Eggs, buttermilk, corn meal, bacon grease.  That's it.  It was mixed and poured into a cast iron skillet that was only used for that sacred bread.  I ate it each night (literally) covered with mounds of butter in an effort to moisten it.  Though my mama was an amazing cook and I rarely turned anything down she made, I longed for the sweet moist cornbread served at school.  This may explain why, as an adult, despite mastering most of what she made for us (and more), I cannot master her cornbread recipe and have been for years on the search for the perfect cornbread.  This one is close, friends.  Very close.


Oh!  If you know me, you know that I often adjust recipes to suit my needs.  With that said, the Irish Stew recipe is perfect as is.   I changed Bisquick to Pamela's Baking Mix in the Cornbread and I reduced the sugar from 1/2 cup to 1/8.  Future recipes I'll only reduce it to 1/4.  It needed just a little more sweetness! 


“Her corn-cake, in all its varieties of hoe-cake, dodgers, muffins and other species too numerous to mention, was a sublime mystery to all less practised compounders.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' (1852)

No comments: