I don't know exactly when I crossed the line, the point at which I'd spent more of my life in the Midwest than in the South, but I do know that some things run deeper than geography. Cornbread, for one.
I haven't lived south of the Mason-Dixon Line since 1989, when I spent the summer at my parents' house before my junior year of college, but I have strong opinions about the One True Cornbread. It has to be all cornmeal. (Yellow, of course, because what happened to white cornmeal? A mutation? A corn vampire? I am suspicious of any cornmeal that's not yellow like God intended.) It has to be made with buttermilk, in a cast iron skillet. You get your oven nice and hot and melt the butter in the skillet before you pour the batter in. And if there is any sugar in it, even a speck, it no longer qualifies as cornbread. It has become Heathen Yankee Food, fit only to be sneered at.
I suppose if a person has been reared on pseudo-cornbread, fluffy with white flour and adulterated with a scoop of Heathen-Yankee-ness, the One True Cornbread might seem a little austere. I say piffle. Some people find, say, Gregorian chant austere. Does that mean that chant needs an electric violin or perhaps a didgeridoo on the side to make it less austere? Obviously not. In just the same way, the pure simplicity of the One True Cornbread should be embraced and not gussied up with frivolities like white flour and [shudder] sugar.
The One True Cornbread is the one I grew up eating, the cornbread my mother and my grandmother made. What they never made, something I love although I've rarely eaten it, was spoonbread. I made a batch for dinner tonight.
To make spoonbread, you first make cornmeal mush. Bring 4 cups of milk to a boil, and add 1 1/3 cups of cornmeal (yellow, unless you want the corn vampires to come after you and suck your blood). Whisk it in briskly, because lumpy spoonbread is a sad sad thing. Cook it for about ten minutes, stirring often and with vigor, until it is thick. Toward the end, stir in 1 1/2 t. salt and about 3 T. butter. Set it aside and let it cool for a bit.
Preheat your oven to 375 and grease a 2-quart baking dish. Separate four eggs. When the mush has cooled enough that you won't scramble them, stir in the yolks. Beat the whites until they are stiff, and add a healthy dollop to the yolky mush to lighten it. Then stir in the remaining whites, mixing gently but combining thoroughly. Bake for about 40 minutes, until it's set but still a little bit moist.
Serve it with a spoon, and explain that the utensil might be the reason it's called spoonbread. If you have an etymologically inclined audience, you can tell them that it might also be called spoonbread because there's a Native American word for porridge that sounds a lot like spoon. Nobody knows about that.
I do, however, know about this: if you put sugar in your spoonbread, you'd better not tell me. Some things are better kept hidden.
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