June 21, 2017

Jalapeño Cornbread

We're gathered here today to mourn our dear friend Eggs...
In the hallowed halls of "foods that disappoint me," cornbread has got to rank pretty high up there. And don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean that I don't like cornbread. It's just that I (and, I assume, everybody) have memories of tasting delicious cornbread, that's light but somehow crumbly at the same time, but doesn't fall apart. This is the cornbread of my idealized youth. And I constantly try to find it. I will pretty much always get cornbread if I see it on a menu, or at a barbecue, or lying unattended in a parking lot, or whatever. And it always disappoints. I pretty much have the same relationship with cornbread that some people have with heroin. So in the spirit of not being perpetually disappointed, and of not ending up an empty[er] shell of a man, I decided to make my own. And in the spirit of lifting heavy things, I decided to make it in my cast-iron skillet. Which (spoiler alert!) turned out to be a pretty good call.

Ingredients:

1.25 cups Cornmeal
3/4 cup All-Purpose Flour (Pro-tip: Don't put the "all-purpose" label to the test. It's pretty much just for cooking and for making paper mache dinosaurs)
2 Eggs
1.5 cups Coconut Milk
1/3 Cup Honey
1 TBSP Lemon Juice
1 TBSP Pickled Jalapenos (Available in pretty much every supermarket. If you can't find em, any canned chiles will do)
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1.25 tsp Salt

So, let's address the elephant in the room first. Yes, this recipe has no meat or dairy of any kind in it. Some might even call it vegetarian and/or dairy-free. In my defense, I know a decently large number of vegetarians, and they've gotta eat too. Also, I may have not wanted to go shopping. The point is, this is delicious and you need to stop being so judgmental if you every want to find love. Step one is taking your dry-goods, also known as your cornmeal, flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda, and whisking them together so that they can get to know each other, share some good times, and try to forget that they're going to get baked in an oven until they're golden and delicious. About a minute seems like long enough. What does flour really have to add to a conversation anyway? Now it's time to deal with your jalapenos. If you have a reasonable can from a reasonable brand, they should already be chopped into little bits. If, like me, you have nonsense jalapenos, you may have to chop them down to size on your own. So...get on that.

Slice it like a pie, cut it into squares, or just eat it like a
giant pancake. There's no wrong way to devour this sucker.
Once your (my) jalapenos are chopped, It's time to get cracking with your eggs (puns!). Whisk them into a homogenous egg-goop, and then add in your honey. The coconut milk and lemon juice together do a fair job of simulating buttermilk. Do you technically need to mix them together before you add them in? Probably not. But baking is a lot like witchcraft (Weird big hats, precise measurements of odd ingredients, used to trick people into loving you, the list goes on), so I didn't take the risk. In any event, add them into your egg-goop along with your jalapenos, and mix it together. Next, pour your wet ingredients on top of your dry ingredients, and mix them together briefly. You don't want to overmix. This is technically known as the "muffin method." Personally, I'm not sure that "add the wet stuff on to the dry stuff and don't mix it too much" actually needs a special name, but who am I to argue with nonsense? Anyhow, throw a little oil in your cast-iron skillet, and heat it up in a 400 degree oven for a minute or two. Then take it out, preferably without burning the crap out of your hand, add your definitely-not-muffin-mix into the hot pan. Then toss that sucker back in the oven for about 20 minutes. When it's done, it'll be crispy and golden on the top, and set in the middle. Then take that sucker out and do your best not to eat the entire thing yourself without sharing any with the vegetarian friends you mentioned earlier in your blog post. You know, hypothetically.


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