Corny Bread

Corn bread. Nothing goes better with a steamy hot bowl of chili con carne.

When your favorite cousin calls to say, "hey, c'mon over to my house for dinner and hangouts!", you say yes. If you're anything like me, you ask what's for dinner and what you can make.

Usually, she says, "bring nothing. Just bring you". Of course, that never flies with me. I never show up at a dinner party (no matter how casual) empty handed. I was raised better than that.

I always get a half hearted tongue lashing about "not listening" and "not doing as I am told". But so far, I have never gone home with less than an empty plate. Hint taken.

I'm a dessert master and I always bring something sweet and delectable.

But this time, I wanted to bring something to go with the main.

I don't eat much chili. I don't eat a lot of tomatoes (heartburn) and I spent a week racking my brain to come up with something to take to dinner and couldn't come up with a thing.

So, off to the Internet I went. I consulted friends in a cooking group, who all said, "cornbread!'. A Google search returned thousands of results; ninety nine percent of them "corn bread". It was as if the universe was trying to tell me something.

I know when to take the hint: corn bread it is. All the recipes (and everyone in the groups I cross-posted to) said that cornbread must be made in a cast iron skillet for best results.

Of course, I didn't have a cast iron skillet but I wasn't prepared to let that deter me from the best side dish for chili con carne, ever.

I went immediately, looking for a recipe to start with as a base, with the added requirement of no cast iron. I settled on Ina Garten's Cheddar Jalapeno Cornbread.

I sought out the episode that shows Ina's demonstration of the cornbread. Because I had never made it before, I watched it a number of times (probably more than ten) and took copious notes. You can also watch the episode here, if you like:

I always make the recipe exactly as indicated the first time, taking notes on what worked, what didn't, how and what I would change the next time I make it and things that would make the process easier/faster.

The recipe (see link above) struck me as very bland.

In the base recipe, there is no spice component whatsoever, with the only flavor additives being salt, scallions and jalapeños.

When I made it again, I decided to play with spices, adding things I would normally add if I were making a pot of chili con carne.

I thought a lot about the fact that chili con carne is a campfire food...a meal a cowboy would eat; hearty and satisfying after a long day of being outdoors and being active. There's a flavor that only campfire cooking can add... which is smoke.

Keeping that in mind, I added:

• onion powder
• garlic powder
• chili powder (repeat and reinforce the smoky flavor)
• chipotlé powder (chipotlés are smoked jalapeños. I wanted to reinforce and repeat the smoky flavor and echo the jalapeños, again)
• cumin
• chili flakes
• smoked sea salt (repeat, reinforce)
• ground black pepper (black pepper hits different areas of the tongue; used for layering of flavor, not heat)
• smoked paprika (repeat, reinforce. Paprika also acts to color the cornbread that gives a beautiful "orange-y" color)

Here again, I will repeat my note on spices: spice and heat are not the same. Do not be afraid of spices. Spices mean flavor. Layered, reinforced flavors. This is what all those celebrity chef shows are talking about when they say things like, "depth of flavor"...."complexity of flavor".

Spices. Use them. Know them. Love them.

The batter is very easy to put together. It's a quick dish to make, with not many steps to follow. When I did it, I measured all of the dry ingredients into my mixing bowl and then made a well.

I mixed all of the wet ingredients together in a glass measuring cup. This means measuring once and dirtying only one dish.

Pour into the well you've made and mix thoroughly. You may find it helpful to lift up the bowl and check the bottom to make sure all of your flour is mixed in properly.

Notes on additives:

1. I used marble cheddar, because that's what I had on hand, when I made it. I also tried the recipe with the white cheddar as indicated. I preferred the taste of marble, overall.
   
2. Ina's recipe did not call for fresh garlic. I love garlic, so I added several cloves, finely chopped.
   
3. The original recipe called for the jalapeños to be seeded (the seeds and ribs have all of the heat). If you do not like spice, remove them and be careful not to touch your face, eyes or mouth when so doing. I like heat, so I left the seeds in and chopped them superfine in a miniature food processor. I used two whole jalapeños. I added them to the batter with the wet.
   
4. This batter can withstand the weight of additions without adding density. I used about a half cup of cooked, crumbled smoked (see what I did, there?) bacon. Interesting little bite, if you're into bacon.  

Notes on baking without Cast Iron:

You do not need a cast iron pan to make this recipe. It will still be good if you bake it in a standard 9x13" cake pan.  Cooking it in cast iron allows you to achieve that crispy, crunchy crust on the outside but keeping the soft, springy texture on the inside. This is because cast iron can take (and hold) a lot of fucking heat.

When I made this the first time, I used an oven safe stainless steel skillet (Lagostina, baby!) rated to 500⁰F. This is very important (obviously). Your skillet must be oven proofed.

Here's what I did:

• Heat the oven to the highest temperature rating your pan will allow (500⁰F, in my case) and heat it for approximately 30-45 minutes. Heat the pan DRY.
• Carefully take it out of the oven, and add a few tablespoons of oil. It will start to shimmer immediately, which means it's hot. 
• Add the batter. You will hear it sizzle, which is what you want. The sizzle is what gives you the crispy, crunchy crust.
• Turn the oven down to the indicated temperature and bake as usual.

I didn't like that the top of the bread was crusty and the bottom was not. So, when the cook time was done, I flipped it out onto a plate, inverted the bread back into the pan with the bottom up and allowed the bottom to crisp.

This is unnecessary; I'm a nitpicker and I wanted it to be perfect, because I like the "oohs" and "aahs" I get when I make something for people.

When I took the cake to my cousin's, she said it was "the best cornbread she'd ever had". I honest to God cried.

To me, this means so much more because she lived and worked in Louisiana for a long, long time. She knows her Southern Food.

Yes, Ma'am.

I must say though, Ina is remiss making the corn bread in a cake pan but we'll just pretend I didn't say that. The corn bread is 1,000 times better when made in cast iron.

I got a Cast Iron pan for Christmas, this year. What a game changer. My cornbread will never be the same.

Notes on cast iron cooking:

The heat is *no joke*. I wear two oven mitts on each hand and it is still screaming hot. Hot, hot hot!
If you accidentally touch it unprotected, even for just a second, you will know it.

I have a permanent scar. It took six weeks for that to properly heal. The skin broke twice and re-blistered. No matter: that cornbread will be worth it, every time.

Cast Iron is HEAVY, even when it is empty. If you are not confident in your upper body strength, get someone to help you. 

When it is done, it looks like this:

It's beautiful. I have made this at least a dozen times since, and have made some additional modifications. They are:

- adding one extra egg
- adding one half cup extra cornmeal. I use medium grind.
- increased baking temperature to 400⁰F and increasing the baking time to 40 minutes.

Allow to cool sufficiently before turning out and cutting, or your bread will crumble and break apart....if you can wait that long.

I usually can't.

Love.

Costco carrots

This post was born out of a need to do something with the biggest bag of carrots I have ever seen and could not resist, purchased at Costco.

On the other side of "what to do with 25 pounds of carrots that are about to go bad?" is "I need a recipe that will look great on my new platter" while taking the two liter bottle of tahini inhabiting the back of my refrigerator into consideration.

Yes, I also bought it at Costco. Frankly, I am sick of hummus (in every one of its incarnations) and I needed something different.

So I started Googling things.

There were so many recipes for roasted carrots with tahini sauce (and other accoutrements of varying degrees of fanciness), that it was hard to pick one.

I settled on a mashup of several recipes, starting with this one, from Katie's Bright Kitchen:

Katie's Bright Kitchen, Roasted Carrots with Tahini Drizzle

Katie's Bright Kitchen has adapted recipes for no sugar and no flour, making it gluten and dirty Keto-diet friendly.

It also looks as if diabetic exchanges have also been included

She's worked out all of the mathematics for this dish so you don't have to. Frankly, I just like my food to taste good, so I wasn't into thinking about it all that much. But, if that's the kind of chef that you are...this is likely the recipe for you.

Neither did I like the idea of not peeling my carrots, so that was strike two.

A stark absence of pistachios meant the end of this recipe, in my kitchen.

I also considered this recipe from the Forked Spoon, taking into account the 10,000 cans of chickpeas clogging my pantry (also Costco):

Forked Spoon, Carrots with Chickpeas

Then I found Simply Scratch's version of a similar recipe. It was written much more approachably (if my opinion counts for anything at all) and didn't appear to have been a poster ad for Whole Food's million dollar organic carrots.

Simply Scratch Turmeric Roasted Carrots

I really liked the idea of using turmeric. I had some in the fridge that I had bought on a whim and now had a reason to use it. Huzzah!

I set about peeling many, many carrots...

Sidebar: have you ever noticed the deeply meditative quality of vegetable peeling? I love peeling carrots. I glean tremendous enjoyment from the sound the peeler makes, sliding across the skin, whispering, "clean! Clean! Clean!" with every scrape of the blade.

(This may simply be a glaring indicator that I need to get out more?)

I love the way that carrots look, immediately after they've been peeled: bright, shiny and glistening. Almost as if peeling them has allowed their carrot-y awesomeness to finally be seen! 

I peeled the remainder of the bag; easily four pounds. Quartered them and put them in a freezer bag to mix with oil and spices (so much easier - and cleaner - than messing around with tongs and a bowl!).

We won't talk about the fact that I lost steam after prepping them all and left the bag of prepped veggies in the fridge to be cooked the next day (or two) later.

When I made them (finally), I didn't follow the recipe, really. I just jotted down the spices as indicated on the back of a scrap of paper and went to the kitchen to play.

A note on spices: I am not afraid of spices; flavor not heat. The two are not mutually exclusive. Generally people believe "spicy" to mean "hot". This is not the case. Spicy means that things have been spiced, or had spices added to them.

Cumin, for example, adds a distinctive flavor that adds no heat.

Also, I never really measure spices. My general rule of thumb is, "go til you can smell it".

In addition to the spices called for in the recipe, I added a few of my own.

To the carrots, I added (with the oil)

• fresh grated ginger (about 1 tsp)
• turmeric (a generous tsp)
• onion powder
• garlic powder
• black pepper
• paprika
• oregano
• chili flakes (pepper and chili flakes hit different spots on your tongue; different kinds of heat)
• mild chili powder (for the smoked flavor and color)
• cumin
• sea salt

I also added approximately 1 head of whole, peeled garlic cloves to the bag with the carrots. I like a lot of garlic. I also like what happens to garlic when roasted in the oven with oil. If you like less, use less.

Massage the carrots and oil and spices together in the bag until everything is lovely and coated. Your cooking oil will turn a lovely, marigold color and will become exceptionally fragrant.

The turmeric will dye the garlic cloves yellow. But it's such a lovely taste, you really shouldn't miss it.

I baked them at 425 for about 40 minutes. the edges of the carrots were just starting to caramelize and were just browning (remember: I had a lot of carrots).

I did not use the second baking sheet on top of the carrots (simply because I hadn't remember to do so). They turned out great.

Afterward, I transferred to my pretty new plate and topped with the sauce.

The sauce was easy to put together and was really, really tasty. I might have made it a little thin.

Next time, I plan to sprinkle the dish with some toasted sesame seeds, to really reinforce the sesame flavor. Thinking on it now, I might have used sesame oil to coat the carrots, rather than regular cooking oil.

Notes for my cooking journal, for next time.

Here's a picture, should you be interested after all that reading.

Love.