Make Delicious Cornbread a Part of Your Wintertime Meals

A wonderful addition to any wintertime meal is cornbread. Warm, delicious, and filling, it’s the ultimate in “comfort food” for those crisp days and chilly evenings as the winter closes in. Cornbread is a great substitute for the dinner roll and goes well with a complete turkey dinner or with just a simple bowl of soup. This versatile food can be a great snack or can be dressed up for a formal meal with just the right garnishing. Give your cornbread a festive look in an individual mini-loaf decorated with red and green pepper slivers as a topper for that seasonal look to your seasonal table. Get creative – bake in a cupcake tray or in a dinner roll pan or a muffin tin for a different look. With added cream to the batter for a softer texture, cornbread can be cooked in a skillet on the stove top as “spoon bread” and served as an alternative to mashed potatoes, or it can be dropped free-form on a cookie sheet and served as “Hush Puppies.” Lightly fried up in a pan, it becomes the Southern treat called “grits.”

Cornbread has had an interesting history. A food staple of the New World, it is in actuality millennia old. Native Indians used corn or maize as a basic in cooking for centuries before the European settlers to the New World colonized North America. Coming from a wheat flour based food source to the Americas where wheat was not plentiful, early colonials borrowed from the natives and began using corn-based flour in their breads. Originally known as “Shawnee cake,” this term for cornbread morphed into “Journey Cake” and then into “Johnny Cake” and the Algonquin term “Apan,” meaning baked, became “pone,” thus giving us baked corn or corn pone. During the mass movements of peoples from Africa and India during slavery, British and American slave ships took cornbread staples into the West Indies where huge slave plantations existed. These simple recipes became incorporated into a Caribbean lifestyle and remains a part of their cuisine to this day. Similarly, Acadians expelled from Atlantic Canada in the 1700's settled in the U.S. bringing back cornbread to our region when they returned to the Maritimes in more peaceful times, hence the popularity for cornbread in our Atlantic provinces. No doubt, many families have their own favourite cornbread recipe that’s a family tradition, taking advantage of all those little specialties in ingredients that make it their own. Some people add bacon bits to the batter, others add cayenne pepper or onion bits. Here’s a basic recipe with the piquant flavourings of jalapeño peppers added to it for a unique taste sensation!

Cornbread

• 2 cups cornmeal, yellow or white, preferably stone-ground
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1 jalapeño pepper
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons honey
• ¼ cup vegetable oil

Makes Eight Pieces

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit (204 degrees Celsius). Grease an 8 by 8 by 2-inch baking pan.
• Mix cornmeal, baking powder, and salt thoroughly. Mix egg, milk, honey, and oil. Add to cornmeal mixture.
• Slice small bits of the jalapeño pepper and add to the mixture, being careful not to include any of the seeds.
• Stir only until dry ingredients are moistened. Batter will be lumpy. Pour into pan and bake for 20 minutes or until lightly browned. When cool, cut into 8 pieces, 2 by 4 inches each.

Stone-ground cornmeal is available in specialty food stores and in some supermarkets. Look for it at The Bulk Barn or Corn Crib Natural Foods Ltd. SuperStore sells loaves of organic cornbread in its organic section. Visit area farmers markets for a host of other wonderful breads from all over the world. Nick the Dutch Baker can be found at both markets with his wonderful multi-grains, rye, and flaxseed breads. Also, Croissant Soleil brings the breads of France to the markets with baskets of baguettes, fresh croissant, and loaves of wheat bread. Hofer's German Bakery specializes in organic breads and Emily’s Bakery has been a area favourite with rabbit pies, poutine, and lovely freshly-baked breads of all types. This winter, focus on the basics. Bread – the ‘staff of life’ truly is the ‘stuff’ of life. Enjoy!