salad

Okay, so I should read recipes more carefully—in looking at the recipe for the original cornbread salad recipe, I see the instructions ‘coarsely crumble the cornbread into a good big bowl and let it dry for a few hours.’ So my careful slicing and cutting into cubes was definitely wasted effort. I salvaged it this morning by coarsely crumbling my nicely cubed bread into a bowl:

I then put the bacon on to fry, and while that was going on, I chopped all the veggies and made the dressing. Veggies done, bacon fried till crisp and drained on paper towel, dressing all mixed, I was good to go. First, add all the chopped veggies and bacon to the cornbread–Before:

And after being tossed together with my impeccably clean hands:

Next, pour on the dressing and mix (with an impeccably clean spoon!), place yummy portion on plate, decorate with a couple bits of reserved crispy bacon:

And devour. This is absolutely delicious, and definitely needs the southern cornbread to make it work. The johnnycake of my youth would utterly fail here. Unless, of course, you add it as a dessert course drizzle with melted butter and maple syrup….mmmm….getting dizzy….love that cornbread! But we’ll save that for another post…

I’ll follow up with the vegetarian version 2 later today… Oh, and here’s the recipe! Nearly forgot—and remember, for my purposes, I used half recipes so I could try both kinds of salad with one pan of cornbread!

PATSY’S CORNBREAD SALAD

1 skillet of cornbread

¾ pound bacon

1 cup mayonnaise

½ cup sweet pickle relish

¼ cup juice from sweet pickle relish

1 T. sugar

2 sweet onions (Vidalia or other), finely chopped

2 green bell peppers, cored, seeded, and finely chopped

4 to 5 juicy ripe tomatoes, cut into medium-size chunks

Coarsely crumble the cornbread into a good big bowl and let it dry out for a few hours.
Cook the bacon, draining off all excess fat. “you want it cooked real brown and crispy,” Patsy says. When the bacon has cooled, crumble it coarsely and set aside.
Stir or whisk together the mayo, relish, relish juice and sugar. That’s your dressing. Set it aside.
When the crumbled cornbread has dried slightly, toss in the onions, peppers, tomatoes and crumbled bacon. Toss well, so that everything is well distributed.
Spoon the dressing over the top and stir thoroughly. Cover tightly and refrigerate until ready to serve. It can be made up to 24 hours in advance.

SO good…okay, a couple tweaks: First, I did a small dice rather than the finely chopped thing, because we like our veggies a little on the larger side. Tomatoes—no good ripe regular tomatoes around here yet, so I used grape tomatoes cut in quarters. And an almost tweak that was not needed—I’m used to using salt and pepper in my dressings, and I’m glad I didn’t—the salad is plenty salty enough, and doesn’t need the pepper, unless you really want it. Enjoy!

As part of my wanderings through the internet world of food, I came across a site that hosts a monthly cooking challenge: http://weekendcookbookchallenge.blogspot.com/.

Every month a new challenge is issued around a certain theme—either a particular chef, a certain kind of food, etc. I believe the goal is to either use a cookbook you have but from which you have never (or rarely) used a recipe. Anyway, this month’s challenge was “Salads”—a challenge for me since I’m not much of a salad maker over all. And for my first time participating I wanted to do something different than the few salads I usually make—veggie salads, pasta salads, salads made with various fruits, etc. For some reason, a memory of Tuscan Bread salad popped into my head, but having no Tuscan bread, nor time to make it, and not knowing of anyone who makes such a product within 200 miles of here, I found myself contemplating other possibilities.

I’d recently purchased a cookbook by veggie author Crescent Dragonwagon (love her name!) called The Cornbread Gospels; our family loves cornbread and other things made with good stoneground cornmeal, and I thought perhaps she might have something that would serve the purpose. At first I just found side dish salads to accompany whatever cornbread you might be making, but then I struck gold: Patsy’s Cornbread Salad, a non-vegetarian recipe, contributed by a Tennessee woman by the name of Patsy Barker.

The salad (and its vegetarian alternative) both require the use of true Southern cornbread—no flour, no sweetener, no baking powder, and this needs to be made the day before so there is time for the crumbled cornbread to dry before using in the salad. Crescent provides three suggested recipes that work with this salad; two used white cornmeal, and since I only have yellow, it made the decision easy! (By the way, the cornmeal I’m using is from a man who ground the corn right in front of me at the Bark Peelers’ Convention in northern Pennsylvania last year. I’ve kept an ever-dwindling supply in my freezer—best cornmeal I’ve ever had! But I digress…)

So for part 1, I’ll give you the recipe I used, with notes on any tweaking along the way:

SYLVIA’S OZARK CORNBREAD

Vegetable oil cooking spray

1 T. butter

2 c. stone-ground yellow cornmeal

1 t. baking soda

1 t. salt

2 c. buttermilk

2 eggs

1 T. mild vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Spray a 10 inch cast iron skillet with oil, add the butter and put it into the oven to heat. Meanwhile, stir together the cornmeal, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl.
In a smaller bowl, beat the buttermilk with the eggs and oil.
Combine the two mixtures. As always, be careful not to overbeat, stirring until wet and dry are just combined.
Scrape the batter into the hot skillet and bake the cornbread until it is golden brown and crusty at the edges, 23 to 27 minutes. Serve hot in wedges. (Or crumble and dry overnight for your cornbread salad!!)

Tweaks: I had no cooking spray, so I just poured a teaspoon or two of olive oil into the pan with the butter before heating the pan in the over. Also, I have no cast iron pan—my cast iron pans are all in storage in NY until we are done living between homes. I used my hard anodized Calphalon skillet instead, and it worked beautifully. But I think cast iron still works the best with regard to cornbread. Finally, I had no mild vegetable oil on hand, so I just used olive oil.

(I wish I could describe to you how good this cornbread is, and how beautiful. The crumb is entirely different than I’ve experienced with the northern cornbread recipes I’ve used, and it really tastes like corn.)

Anyway, back to salad prep: I let the cornbread cool a bit, removed it from the pan and set it on a rack to cool to room temperature. As you can see from the pics, both bottom and top of the cornbread acquired a nice golden brown crust.

I then cut the bread into quarters, then strips, cut the strips crosswise in talk, and then cut into cubes, laying half the amount on two separate pans to dry overnight.

The reason for the two separate pans is because I wanted to try both variations on the salad, so I’m making a half recipe of each to see which we prefer.

Part 2 is coming right up!

Cornbread Salad for the Weekly Cookbook Challenge – Part 2

Cornbread Salad – Part 1