Texas Home Cooking
Page 32
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1½ cups buttermilk
3 eggs, lightly beaten
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
Serves 6 to 8
Grease a 10-inch cast-iron skillet with the oil. Place the empty skillet in a cool oven, and set the oven at 400° F.
In a medium bowl, stir together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda. Pour in the buttermilk and eggs, and gently mix by hand until the mixture is thoroughly blended. Stir in the melted butter.
Remove the skillet from the oven, pour the batter into the skillet (the batter will sizzle), and return it to the oven. Bake the bread for 18 to 20 minutes, or until it begins to brown on top and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Serve the cornbread warm.
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"Crumblin'" is a time-honored way of drinking your cornbread. Take a big glass—the kind you'd use for iced tea—and crumble in enough cornbread to fill it about three-fourths full. Add enough buttermilk to top off the glass, and spoon down the mushy mixture as you would a thick malt.
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Jalapeño Cornbread
Jalapeño cornbread is so popular in Texas that many people assume, as Frank X. Tolbert once claimed, that it's an "old border recipe." In truth the dish is probably younger than rock and roll, but it's still a sure-fire approach to a classic concept, usually spicier, heavier, and moister than regular cornbread.
4 tablespoons oil, preferably canola or corn
1 cup medium-grind cornmeal, preferably stone-ground
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup corn kernels, fresh or frozen
1 cup (4 ounces) grated sharp cheddar cheese
3 eggs, lightly beaten
3
to
4 fresh or pickled jalapeños, minced
2 tablespoons minced onion
2 tablespoons sour cream
¼ cup unsalted butter, melted
Serves 6 to 8
Grease a 10-inch cast-iron skillet with 1 tablespoon of the oil. Place the empty skillet in a cool oven, and set the oven to 400° F.
In a medium bowl, stir together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Pour in the buttermilk, and add the corn, cheese, eggs, jalapeños, onion, and sour cream. Gently mix by hand until the mixture is thoroughly blended. Stir in the melted butter and the remaining oil.
Remove the skillet from the oven, pour the batter into the skillet (the batter will sizzle), and return it to the oven. Bake the cornbread for 30 minutes, or until it begins to brown on top. Serve the cornbread warm.
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In one form or another—and the variations were many—cornbread was a mainstay of the Texas diet in the pioneer period. Not everyone loved it, though. An English visitor complained that the staple was "a modification of sawdust," and another traveler railed against having to stay in "the usual cornbread-and-coffee sort of hotel."
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Technique Tips
These tips apply to any cornbread recipe:
For the best results, use a stone-ground cornmeal like Arrowhead Mills or Adams. (If you can't find stone-ground cornmeal locally, see "Mail-Order Sources," [>], for information.)
Keep the cornmeal in the freezer for freshness.
Make the cornbread in a heavy skillet, preferably cast-iron, to get the crispest crusts; baking pans make poor substitutes.
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Spoonbread
The most elegant preparation of cornmeal in Southern cooking, spoonbread migrated to Texas before the Civil War. As the name implies, it was originally made as a bread, but more recently it's also served as a soufflé-like side dish, suitable for any meal of the day.
1 cup water
1 cup buttermilk
½ cup milk
½ cup corn kernels, fresh or frozen
2 tablespoons corn oil, preferably unrefined
2 tablespoons chopped red bell pepper
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon white pepper
¾ cup fine-grind cornmeal, preferably stone-ground
3 eggs, separated
Serves 4 to 6
Preheat the oven to 425° F. Grease a 10-inch cast-iron skillet or a shallow 9-by-12-inch baking dish.
Over medium heat, combine all the ingredients except the cornmeal and eggs in a large, heavy saucepan, and bring the liquid to a simmer. Sprinkle the cornmeal over the hot liquid and stir it in well. After incorporating all of the cornmeal and eliminating any lumps, remove the pan from the heat. Set the mixture aside to cool slightly.
Beat the egg yolks together until they are light yellow and frothy. Stir the yolks into the cornmeal. Beat two of the egg whites (saving the third for another use) until soft peaks form. Fold the whites into the cornmeal, and combine lightly. Pour the mixture into the prepared skillet or dish. Bake the bread for about 30 minutes, or until it is set and just a bit browned. Serve it immediately.
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Spanish and Mexican settlers in Texas usually ground corn in a metate, a stone tool designed specifically for the purpose. The early Anglos had to improvise. Frequently they used a hollowed-out tree stump, cut to a convenient height for the woman of the house so she could pound the corn into meal with a large wooden pestle.
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Buttermilk Biscuits
Before the invention of baking powder, cooks always used buttermilk in biscuits to make them rise. This still works today, but the distinctive flavor is the only real reason you should need to prefer buttermilk to regular milk.
2½ cups soft-wheat flour, preferably White Lily
1½ tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons lard, well chilled
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening, preferably Crisco, well chilled
1 cup buttermilk, well chilled
Makes about 8 to 10 3-inch or 12 to 14 2-inch biscuits
Position the rack in the middle of the oven, and preheat the oven to 450° F. Grease a baking sheet.
Sift together the dry ingredients into a large bowl. Repeat the sifting three times. With a pastry blender or large fork, blend in the lard and shortening until a coarse meal forms. Pour in the buttermilk, and stir together the wet and dry ingredients just until a sticky dough forms.
Flour your hands and a pastry board or counter. Turn the dough out and knead it gently, only four to six times. Pat the dough until it is about ½ inch thick. Cut it with a 2- or 3-inch-round biscuit cutter or a round cookie cutter.
Transfer the biscuits to the baking sheet, arranging them so that they just touch each other. Bake the biscuits about 10 minutes, or until they are raised and golden brown. (At the halfway point, turn the baking sheet from front to back.)
Serve the biscuits hot with butter or topped with cream gravy.
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Baking powder wasn't available in Texas until the 1890s, and it didn't catch on fully at first. Some men suspected it made life too easy for women and might be poisonous.
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Technique Tips
You won't go wrong with any biscuit recipe if you follow these hints:
Use a low-gluten soft-wheat flour like White Lily. If you can't find it locally, see "Mail-Order Sources" ([>]).
Sift the flour before measuring it, and then sift it together with the other dry ingredients several times for lightness.
Lard produces the flakiest, best-textured biscuits. You can substitute shortening for some of the lard and still get a fine result, but this is not the place to use vegetable oils.
Chill the fat and the bowl, and work quickly to keep the fat from melting. All the grains of flour need to
be surrounded with fat so that water will not activate the flour's gluten. If that happens, you'll get a hard, heavy biscuit.
Invest in a good biscuit cutter with sharp edges that cut clean and an open top that allows air to escape, so that the dough rises properly.
Pat the dough out only once. Rerolled biscuit dough takes on weight like a sumo wrestler. This doesn't apply to the recipe for Masa Biscuits, which can have the dough rerolled once because there's less gluten to toughen the mixture.
For even cooking, turn the baking sheet around in the oven halfway through cooking, and, if you bake more than a single sheet, reverse the positions of the sheets in the oven.
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Kerr Family Masa Biscuits
The delicate corn flavor in these biscuits comes from masa harina, a treated cornmeal. The absence of gluten in the masa makes the biscuits especially tender. We include them courtesy of Norma and Park Kerr, who feature them in their El Paso Chile Company's Texas Border Cookbook. Like the Kerrs, we eat them split, buttered, and slathered with jalapeño jelly.
3¾ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1½ cups masa harina
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 stick unsalted butter, well chilled and cut into small pieces
½ cup vegetable shortening, well chilled and cut into small pieces
2 cups buttermilk, chilled
Makes 12
Position racks in the upper and middle thirds of the oven, and preheat the oven to 450° F.
In a large bowl, stir together 3½ cups of the flour and the masa, baking powder, and salt. With a pastry blender or large fork, blend in the butter and shortening until the mixture resembles a coarse and slightly lumpy meal. Stir in the buttermilk until a soft, crumbly dough is formed.
Sprinkle the work surface with half the remaining flour. Turn the dough out, gather it into a ball, and briefly knead it, just until it holds together. Flatten the dough, sprinkle it with the rest of the flour, and roll it out until it is about 1 inch thick. Form the biscuits with a 3-inch-round cutter, and transfer them to two ungreased baking sheets, spacing the biscuits about 2 inches apart. Gather the scraps into a ball, roll it out to a 1-inch thickness, and cut out the remaining biscuits.
Set the baking sheets on the racks, and bake the biscuits about 15 minutes, or until they are golden and crisp. At the halfway point, exchange the position of the sheets on the racks from top to bottom and from front to back. Serve the biscuits hot or warm.
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In Texas and many areas of the South, cautious cooks use yeast in their biscuits along with baking powder and soda, giving them triple leavening power. Known as angel or bride's biscuits, they're more likely to rise to the heavens than a Dallas do-gooder.
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Sweet Potato Biscuits
Another tasty variation on buttermilk biscuits, these feature sweet potatoes, a staple in Texas since pioneer days.
8 ounces cooked sweet potato, well chilled
⅓ cup buttermilk, well chilled
1 cup soft-wheat flour, preferably White Lily
1½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons lard or vegetable shortening, preferably Crisco, well chilled
Makes about 12 to 14 2-inch biscuits
Preheat the oven to 450° F. Grease a baking sheet.
Pureé the sweet potato and buttermilk together in a food processor or blender.
Sift the dry ingredients together into a bowl. With a pastry blender or large fork, cut in the lard or shortening, until the mixture resembles coarse meal. With a spoon or spatula, fold in the sweet potato mixture. Blend it together well with the dry ingredients, but don't overmix.
On a floured board or counter, knead the dough gently, for about six turns. Pat it out, and cut it with a biscuit cutter or round cookie cutter dipped in flour.
Transfer the biscuits to the baking sheet, and bake them 12 to 14 minutes, until they are raised and lightly browned on the top edges. At the halfway point, exchange the position of the sheets on the racks from top to bottom and from front to back. Serve the biscuits immediately.
Variation: A little chile can enhance sweet potato biscuits. Add 2 teaspoons ground dried red chile, preferably New Mexican, to the dry ingredients when sifting.
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Flour figured prominently in the development of country-and-Western music in Texas. The great Bob Wills, inventor of Western swing, won his initial fame on a Fort Worth live-radio show sponsored by Light Crust flour. When he fell out with the crusty president of the company, "Pappy" O'Daniel, he changed the name of his band from the Light Crust Doughboys to the Texas Playboys and ultimately went into a partnership with General Mills to market Play Boy flour.
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Edna's Sunday Rolls
Throughout much of this century in Texas, biscuits were the everyday bread in most homes, and yeast rolls were the Sunday dinner treat. This recipe comes from Dallas cook Edna McGlothen, who made these light, soft rolls every week for many years for the big family meal.
2 packages yeast
¼ cup warm water
1 cup milk
¾ cup sugar
½ cup unsalted butter
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening, preferably Crisco
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup mashed potatoes
4½
to
5 cups flour, preferably a hard winter-wheat flour for bread baking
Melted butter
Makes about 2 to 2½ dozen rolls
In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the water.
Warm the milk, sugar, ½ cup butter, shortening, and salt together in a small, heavy pan over low heat, just until the butter and shortening melt. Set the pan aside to cool to lukewarm. Add the liquid to the yeast, and let the mixture sit for 5 minutes. Mix in the eggs and potatoes. Stir in as much of the flour as is needed to form a soft dough. Cover the bowl with a towel, and let the dough rise until it has nearly doubled in size, about 1½ to 2 hours.
Sprinkle a counter with some of the remaining flour, and knead the dough for a couple of minutes to make it smooth and elastic. Add in a little flour, if needed, to make the dough more workable. Roll the dough out to a K- to M-inch thickness. Cut it into rounds with a 3-inch biscuit cutter. Brush half of each roll's top with melted butter and fold the unbuttered half over it, so that the upper half extends about ½ inch beyond the lower half. Arrange the rolls on a greased baking sheet with the rounded side of each roll just touching the flat side of the roll next to it. Allow the rolls to sit, covered, for 1 hour or until they are doubled in size.
Preheat the oven to 400° F. Bake the rolls for 10 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350° F, and bake the rolls an additional 10 to 12 minutes, or until they are nicely browned. Serve the rolls hot.
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In her 1981 book The Only Texas Cookbook, Linda West Eckhardt aptly describes the desirable thickness of biscuit dough by saying it should be as plump as the pad of a prickly-pear cactus.
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Poppyseed Cheese Bread
When poppyseeds aren't populating Texas salad dressings, they're popping up in breads.
¾ cup unsalted butter
3 cup sugar
5 eggs
½ cup milk
2 fresh jalapeños, minced
2 tablespoons poppyseeds
1 cup (4 ounces) grated mild cheddar cheese
3 ounces cream cheese
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup medium-grind cornmeal, preferably stone-ground
2½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Makes 1 9-by-5-inch loaf
Preheat the oven to 375° F. Grease a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan.
Cream together the butter and sugar with an electric mixer or food processor. Add the eggs, and
blend them in. Add the milk, jalapeños, poppyseeds, and cheeses, mixing well after each addition. Sift together the remaining ingredients, and add the dry mixture to the batter, about one-third at a time, mixing well after each addition.
Spoon the batter into the pan. Bake the bread about 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Serve the bread warm or at room temperature.
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Restaurants abuse the term Texas toast, using it to signify any oversized piece of white bread toasted in any old way. Originally, the name referred to how the bread was cooked, which was closer to frying than toasting. The cook slathered the bread with butter and warmed it on the grill beside the steaks and burgers, where it absorbed some of the meat drippings. It's still a tasty way to eat white bread.
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Corn and Jalapeño Jam Muffins
Hot and sweet go together in Texas—and these muffins—like moonshine and moonlight.