Cornbread

I'll spare our vast audience with the usual bla bla bla: now we'll come back to posting, it's been a very rough period but now we are full of ideas and so on. This is just for future memory, nothing else...

I have finally secured an object which I've coveted for a while: a cast iron skillet. I've bought in the US, it's a 10 1/4" Lodge, and I've brought it back in my checked luggage despite, or because, it is so heavy. Despite since, with the strict regulations that are nowadays imposed on checked luggage, it would make more sense to transport it in my carry-on. But I could envision some security person telling me that I could not bring that thing into an airplane because it was considered a weapon. And you could certainly use it as such!

The reasons why I have coveted the skillet for a long time are many, but one was clearly the fact that I wanted to make cornbread skillet style. And here it is the finished product, along with a glimpse of the skillet itself:


The recipe was gleaned from various sources on the web, but most notably this one. If you live in a place where buttermilk is hard to come by, do as I did: mix one plain yogurt (125 g) with enough milk to make for the required 1 1/4 cup. It works very well.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup yellow cornmeal (fairly coarse)
  
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/4 cup buttermilk (see above for substitute)
  
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  

Preheat oven to 200 C and put the skillet in the middle rack. Add a bit of the oil to the skillet, enough to coat the bottom. Mix the flours, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. In another bowl, mix the buttermilk and baking soda. Beat the egg lightly with a fork and add to the buttermilk. Add the oil. Tip these wet ingredients into the dry, and blend them with as little strokes as possible.

Scrape the contents into the hot skillet and bake until the bread is golden brown, half an hour or so. It's very good when it's warm with a bit of butter.