Cornbread & Buttermilk - September 8, 2020

 

My daddy used to love cornbread and buttermilk.  He would crumble stale cornbread into a glass, pour buttermilk over it, and eat it with a spoon.  When I was a kid, I thought it was disgusting, and if I'd say so, Daddy would just say, "Man, you don't know what's good," and keep eating.

Daddy grew up dirt poor in northeast Alabama during the Great Depression.  He was one of 15 children (twelve of whom made it to adulthood).  His father was something of a n'er-do-well, and left the family to fend for themselves for long stretches of time.  Cornbread was a staple of their diet.  I imagine that cornbread and buttermilk served as breakfast, lunch, and supper, at times.  They didn't throw out the left-overs.  

His father's mother, Martha, lived with them, and reportedly ruled the roost.  Mother remembered hearing her say to her daughter-in-law, "Pearl, you go pick the greens, and I'll start the cornbread."  

"Granny"

Daddy remembered that she made the worst cornbread in the world.  He said she made a "pone," and cooked it on a flat pan.  I can't imagine cornbread that would stand up by itself before it was cooked.  It probably had to be soaked in buttermilk, if it was to be choked down.

Both my mother and my mother-in-law were/are cornbread masters, though their end results are strikingly different.  Mother liked to lace hers with chopped onion, sometimes.  Onions or not, her cornbread, always cooked in a pre-heated iron skillet, always baked at 500 degrees, was crisp on the bottom and sides and moist in the middle.  She would dump the cake out, upside-down, onto a plate, and cut it into triangles.  Nanny cooks her cornbread on a pizza pan, of all things.  She puts a blob of grease on the pan and heats it in the oven just long enough to melt the grease, then she pours the grease in the batter and bakes it at 425.  Her cornbread has a tad of sugar in it.  It comes out with a cake-like texture, barely brown on the bottom, golden on the top.  As soon as it's out of the oven, she unwraps a stick of butter and smears it around on the cornbread until the whole stick is melted into the bread, then she cuts it into squares (except for the edge pieces, of course).

I love both versions and have tried to duplicate them.  Forty years, I've been trying.  Still haven't gotten it right, though I've made cornbread at least once a week.  In fact, I made cornbread for supper Sunday night, to go with the peas I picked on Saturday.  We don't throw out left-over cornbread, either.  If I've made Nanny's thin version, we toast the left-overs in the toaster (it's a little hard to get out without crumbling it all to heck) and smear it with more butter.  Monday night, we toasted Sunday's left-over cornbread (Mother's thick version) in the air-fryer to go with the left-over peas.  

I had cornbread crumbled in milk for breakfast this morning. 

Don't tell Daddy.  ;)