Before arriving, Scott mailed copies of his book, The Gift of Southern Cooking, co-authored by Ms. Lewis and Ms. Lewis’ The Taste of Country Cooking. Without much previous knowledge of Ms. Lewis reputation for bringing fine southern cookery to New York City, I felt drawn to her book. I found myself in our stuffy kitchen office scanning her recipes when I should have been resting after long days in the kitchen. Instead, I journeyed back to early twentieth century Freetown, Virginia where Ms. Lewis was raised to enjoy the abundance of foods brought by each season.
Every chapter of Ms. Lewis’ book opens with memories of her childhood in Freetown. Growing up just a few decades out of slavery in the U.S., Ms. Lewis and the inhabitants of her town were free African-Americans who founded a town with a culture of self-sufficiency. Whether or not the citizens of Freetown relied on their independent food supply due to dire economic conditions or not, Ms. Lewis’s family and their neighbors shared a wealth of knowledge about farming. As the seasons passed, new foods made their journey from the field to the table simply yet elegantly.
During my internship in Rome, Mona Talbott led our staff in preparing meals in the same spirit of Ms. Lewis’ childhood memories. Using small Roman cookbooks with minimal photographs and rustic recipes from centuries of Roman social and culinary history as our guides, we prepared comforting soups, hearty pastas and an array of vegetable dishes replete with foods from farms in Lazio and Toscana. The themes of our daily menus, while simple and straightforward, were distinctively Italian and mostly Roman. Several evenings of reading on country cooking, inspired me to suggest adding sweet potatoes, black-eyed peas and other southern specialties to our menu. Not only were these foods challenging to find but they also did not fit the bill. Scott’s visit was an exciting opportunity to cook food that reminded me of my family’s central Louisiana culinary repertoire. After he left, I still yearned for southern comfort foods and searched for the ingredients to recreate at least one dish from Ms. Lewis’s book: cornbread.
One of the most important lessons that I learned while in Rome was that the quality and character of the ingredients outweigh the skill of the most talented cook. If a dish does not begin with flavorful foods that have maintained their integrity it will not be exciting or worthy of reflection. The food will merely be sustenance. “Something to eat,” is the only way I can describe the cornbread I made following Ms. Lewis recipe. I also tried Scott’s recipe and found it to be equally dense and dry. How could this be? Both of their recipes were preceded by descriptions of fluffy bread that would gently absorb the creaminess of butter and the rich sauces of braised meats. Not the thick, dry, mealy circular form that I tasted once and never enjoyed with other foods. Where did I go wrong?
The cornmeal. The fine ground white cornmeal we used in Rome was ideal for a silky polenta or a plate of creamy grits. It was not the fine cornmeal both Ms. Lewis and Scott called to sift in their recipes. This Christmas, in my current kitchen in the USA, we received just the cornmeal needed to yield a moist bread without the addition of flour, sugar or anything else to make it into cake instead of quick bread.
On Christmas day I was given the green light to prepare cornbread as a special side dish. Since it was an unexpected addition on our menu, I felt a little less pressure for the cornbread to turn out perfect. Nonetheless, I still felt a knot in my throat as I decided to give Ms. Lewis’ recipe another try.
My hands trembled as I scaled the baking powder, eggs and buttermilk. Two whole tablespoons of baking powder? Wasn’t that a bit much? I watched the mixture become terribly thin as I whisked in the buttermilk. How was this ever going to hold together?
One hour and several nails bitten off later, I flipped the beautiful golden two-inch deep disk out of the pan. I cut into the bread and immediately tasted the steaming piece. The crunchy crust reminded me of breads made in my Louisiana grandmother’s heavy cast-iron skillet. The texture was certainly lighter than the Roman mound I made last year and it had a much more pleasant taste. However, it still lacked the deep savory flavor I remembered of my grandmother’s white cornbread before she fell into the sweet trap of Jiffy Cornbread Mix.
I begrudgingly plated the triangular pieces. I had hoped to remind someone else of a previous memorable experience with southern cornbread. Instead, I was giving them a lackluster imitation.
Two days later, we cleared out all the leftovers from Christmas day. I had wrapped the completely cooled and last remaining loaf of cornbread on Christmas day to keep it from drying out and turning into garbage even though it did not meet my expectations. This final loaf could not be cut into the necessary thirty portions necessary to appear on our menu so I decided to take it home and make cornbread croutons.
The following morning, now three days after the initial baking, I heated up a slice for my breakfast. I sat on my dining mat and bit into the warm crunchy crust and moist center smeared with butter. With my eyes closed, I smiled, as I tasted hints of toasted and faintly sweet white corn followed by the richness of butter. A much more complex flavor than what I tasted on Christmas day. What a difference! I never thought baked goods could taste better days later. I thought hearty leftovers like lasagna and short ribs were the only foods that should sit for at least a day before being eaten. This cornbread disproved that theory.
For several days I pondered the change in the flavor of the cornbread and decided that the differences probably came from two major factors. My USA version of Ms. Lewis’ recipe was a vast improvement from my first attempts in Rome because I used the intended cornmeal. Second, the improved taste of the bread days later probably was a result of giving the bread sufficient time to rest and cool. On Christmas, I was pressed for time and cut into the steaming breads. The final uncut loaf had been given sufficient time for the combination of sifted cornmeal, salt, baking powder, eggs and buttermilk to properly marry.
My first faulty endeavors making cornbread in Rome contributed to my skepticism of recipes. I have always been encouraged to rely upon my senses when cooking and only use the recipe as a guideline. While I do still believe in following one’s senses in the kitchen, well-tested recipes prepared with appropriate and excellent quality ingredients can be trusted. Although my heart raced as I prayed for the very wet batter to turn into bread, I followed Ms. Lewis recipe and found my way back to my Louisiana grandmother’s cast-iron skillet cornbread.
The following recipe serves five to six people. Instead of scaling down, a single person might bake the original recipe quantity and cut it into slices that can be frozen and enjoyed later.
Corn Bread
Serves 5 to 6
2 cups sifted white cornmeal
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder
3 eggs, beaten
1 tablespoon lard (corn oil can be used instead)
1 tablespoon butter
2 cups sour milk, or buttermilk
9 x 10-inch pan
Sift the cornmeal, salt, soda, and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Stir in the beaten eggs. At this point set the baking pans in the oven with the lard and butter added. Pour the sour milk into the cornmeal batter and stir well. Now remove the pan from the oven and tilt it all around to oil the whole surface of the pan. Pour off into the batter what fat remains. Mix well and pour the batter into the hot pan. Cornmeal batter must be poured into a sizzling hot pan, otherwise it will stick. Bake at 400º(F) for 25 to 30 minutes. Remove and cut into squares. Serve hot.
Note: Sometimes we would add a tablespoon of lard to the baking pan and return it to the oven to heat. Then we would pour the batter in, forcing the extra fat into the corners of the pan. (When cooked, the corner pieces of bread would have a lacy, crispy edge and there would be quite a bit of competition for those pieces when it was placed on the table.)
Hog-butchering breakfast was the kind of occasion when we would open some of the wild strawberry preserves we had made in mid-May and the wild blackberry jelly we had put up in July.
(Lewis, Edna. The Taste of Country Cooking. Alfred Knopf. New York. 2007.)
Cornbread leftovers:
Cold cut sandwich with whole grain Dijon mustard on grilled cornbread.
Classic side: Braised collard greens with sautéed onions, finished with a touch of red wine vinegar, Alderwood smoked salt and red pepper flakes.
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