Damon Lee Fowler

 

Cornstick pans have always been a puzzle. Most of them have not six or twelve but seven corn-shaped wells. Seven? Maybe the intention is a baker's half-dozen, but it's an awkward number, especially when there are just two people at the table.

 

I've got two of them: If you've got a family of any size or company coming, you need at least two pans to make a reasonable batch with enough bread to go around. But now that there's usually only two of us at our table, one pan will do.

 

Unfortunately, half a batch of most cornbread batter recipes is more than is needed to fill one pan. After a little bit of trial and error fiddling, however, I've finally come up with a formula that's just right.

 

Cornsticks for Two

 

Makes 7 cornsticks, serving 2-3

 

2/3 cup stone-ground cornmeal

¾ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

2/3 cup whole milk buttermilk

2 tablespoons olive oil or melted butter, plus more for the pan

1 large egg, at room temperature

Softened butter (salted or unsalted—your choice), for serving

 

1. Position a rack in the center of the oven, put a seasoned cornstick pan on it, and preheat the oven to 450-475° F. Whisk together the meal, baking powder, soda, and salt. Measure the buttermilk in a 2-cup measuring cup and add the oil. Break the egg into the cup and beat until the mixture is smooth. Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry and quickly stir until the batter is smooth.

 

2. When the oven is preheated, carefully remove the cornstick pan (it should be very hot) and brush its wells with olive oil or butter. Quickly divide the batter evenly among the wells and immediately return the pan to the oven. Bake until the cornsticks are cooked through and a crisp golden brown, about 14 minutes. Meanwhile, line a bread basket with a thick kitchen towel and have it ready. As soon as the cornsticks are done, turn them out into the prepared basket, fold the towel over them, and serve at once, with softened butter passed separately.

 

My mother's cornbread, while I was growing up, was like so many other Southerners' bread back then, a round cake baked in a preheated iron skillet, just as her mother's and grandmother's and probably her great- and great-great-grandmother's had been before her. Cut into wedges and passed around while it was almost blistering hot, we eagerly risked a burn to split our steaming wedge and stuff it with as much butter as we could get away with.

 

It was the quintessential accompaniment for Mama's pots of greens, beans, field peas, and vegetable soup.

 

And yet, oddly enough, when I'm missing her and craving her cornbread, it's not a round skillet cake that I make, Read More 

 

Most of us have heard that old saw about how moving is as stressful as the loss of a job, the death of a spouse or close family member, a divorce, or a debilitating illness. Well, having been through all of those things, I can't say it's quite up to their level, but what I can tell you is that it gets more difficult with age.

 

Two months into our new life in Virginia, people ask if we're unpacked and settled; we look at one another, let out a sigh, and then laugh. On the surface, the house is beginning to look as if we've lived here for a long time. The boxes are all unpacked, a lot of the pictures are hanging, and shelves are filled with books.

 

But unpacked isn't settled Read More 

“Taste.”

When I once asked the late Italian cooking doyenne Marcella Hazan what she felt was the most important thing in cooking, that was her immediate and emphatic answer.

Marcella died four years ago today, just a few months shy of her ninetieth birthday. When I reflect on her life as a teacher and sum what she taught us, it all comes down to that: Taste.

It may seem obvious and simplistic, but it’s all too often overlooked in our age of so-called culinary cleverness. It’s far too easy to get carried away with being “creative,” or with taking too much to heart the notion that we “eat first with our eyes,” and lose sight of the single most important thing: that moment when we lift our forks and the food meets with our tongues. Read More 

Before tackling the stuffing or dressing, a quick word about tradition, with a word (and recipe) for one of the ingredients from my own tradition.

The wonderful thing about what you put into that savory bread pudding that accompanies your turkey, no matter what you put in it and whether you bake it in the bird or out of it, is that it’s one time that sticking to tradition will win for you every time. You really don’t have to think about it, analyze it, or reinvent it—you just make it and sit back and bask in the praise. Read More 

If all has gone well and you’ve done enough basic prep by tomorrow, your only really big job will be the turkey and dressing. If you haven’t tried to roast a turkey in a year (or have never done it), relax: a turkey roasts just like a chicken – it just takes longer. Allow plenty of time and remember that it doesn’t have to look like those magazine covers. Read More 

I don’t know what you’re doing on this late February day, but it cannot be better than what I’ve been doing: sipping piping hot double-concentrated homemade beef broth while laughing and crying my way through Julia Reed’s new masterpiece, But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria!

This morning dawned cold, wet, and gray in Savannah and I’ve been taking advantage of a rare day on my own to put a batch of said beef broth through one last simmer while reading Julia’s delicious prose as background for a newspaper story. Read More 

Today’s post is late because it’s my birthday, and is about dressing and cornbread because—it’s my birthday, and for this one day I can be personal and frank.

Whoever figured out how to recycle stale bread by seasoning it with herbs and spices, moistening it with broth, and then shoving it into a roasting fowl so that it slowly baked, basting itself in the juices from the bird while it rotated on the spit, is one of those thousands of unsung culinary giants that has been lost to history. But that the idea survives to this day is a testament to its sheer genius, and it’s a shame that they never got due credit. Read More