Free The Cornbread Gospels by Crescent Dragonwagon Page A

mother’s social style is what I came to recognize as the classic manner in which Southern women were (to some extent are) schooled: graceful, charming, genteel, effusive in thanks, indirect, quite certain (despite or because of this) to get their way, and capable of summing up others with wicked, deadly accuracy (generally only in private company, after a gin and tonic or two).
    My mother, a good cook, specialized in entrées. I took to baking from the first, and took over the post asdesignated family cornbread baker early on, using the mix with its cunning mirror-shiny pan, one step up from a doll’s baking dish. This cornbread, very sweet, rose with a slightly domed center. In our house it wasn’t served with any of the tried-and-true cornbread matches: not chili, soup, greens, or beans. And it never accompanied meals. Instead, it was a snack, always served with butter and honey.
    Don’t these cornbread beginnings seem shallowly rooted, unsoulful, for someone who would grow up to be a cornbread aficionado?
    Well. At the 2003 National Cornbread Festival in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, I met a couple named Stephanie and LeBron Colvin (see page 268 ), both Southerners.
    By this point in my cornbread research I’d begun to question what are often promulgated as the clear-cut, decisive differences between Northern and Southern cornbreads (see pages 34 – 36 ). Yes, there were general “as a rules.” But exceptions to these abounded.
    When Stephanie told me about the sweet, square Virginia cornbread she had grown up on, always served with butter and honey, my cornbread roots deepened: Suddenly, through a few simple accompaniments, matter-of-fact in a suburban New York childhood, I was not just a “mix cornbread” girl. I had propers, identity, a culinary genealogy attaching me to my mother, and to her child hood in Norfolk, Virginia. That’s cornbread root magic and mojo in action.
    “Don’t you dare throw that bowl out!” I told my mother. “It’s odd, what children remember,” she said, bemused. “I never dreamed that old bowl had any significance to you.”
    But it did. And she kept it. And one day I’ll be making cornbread in it, this time from scratch, with my very young adopted niece, Zoë, who will make that satisfying crack as she breaks the egg against the side of the rosy-beige bowl.

V ERMONT M APLE -S WEETENED C ORNBREAD
    M AKES 9 SQUARES
    Idyllic childhood summers and early fall days were spent at my Aunt Dot’s farm in southeastern Vermont, where I now live. Maple syrup is part of many meals I associate with the farm. It makes its way into many Vermont cornbreads, too. This version is sweet but not too sweet, tender, and rises high into a bit of a dome in the middle. It’s best hot from the oven with butter and, if you wish, a little extra syrup. Enjoy it with baked beans, also sweetened with a good dollop of maple syrup. And if you like the flavor of cornbread and maple syrup as much as I do, don’t miss the Glazed Maple Cornmeal Rolls on page 176 .
    Vegetable oil cooking spray
    1 cup unbleached white flour
    1 cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal
    1 tablespoon baking powder
    ½ teaspoon salt
    2 eggs
    ⅓ cup pure maple syrup
    ⅔ cup milk
    ⅓ cup butter, melted, or mild vegetable oil
    1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Spray an 8-inch square pan with oil, and set aside.
    2. Sift together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl.
    3. Break the eggs into a smaller bowl, and whisk them well. Whisk in the maple syrup, milk, and melted butter or oil.
    4. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and combine them quickly, using as few strokes as possible. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake until golden brown, 20 minutes.

    ·M·E·N·U·
    A S UGARING -O FF S UPPER
    Coleslaw with a Tart, Mustardy Vinaigrette
    *
    Vermont Maple-Sweetened Cornbread
    *
    Brattleboro Baked Beans Borracho
    *
    Baked Apples Glazed with Maple Syrup

    G OT TO D RAW THE L INE S OMEWHERE :
M ASON , D IXON