... a spirited celebration of regional food and culinary craft, season by season, with original recipes by Susan S. Bradley
Have you ever had a dish haunt you for years and years? Or perhaps one particular component of a dish? Have you tried repeatedly to reproduce that dish and failed miserably every time? Have you feigned innocence with one after another server to see if you could wheedle out the EXACT instructions for making that elusive something? “This is delicious. What type of bread is it?” “Really? But it’s SO crisp. How long does it bake?” “Parmesan too, eh?”
I planned to do a short post on how to make a perfect scone and then several days into research and testing realized that like most great things, superlative scones are not so simple after all. This is not to say that they are difficult to make; just that there is a world of contradictory information available on the best way to produce them, plus dozens of basic formulas that run the gamut from doughs with no butter or eggs at all to doughs with large quantities of both. What is the bewildered cook to do?
I’m always on the lookout for interesting variations on the corn bread theme, especially when leaves turn glorious shades of russet and crimson and nights turn cool. I LOVE corn bread–especially Aunt Elfred’s Corn Bread, which is high, light, and tender, with the requisite depth of cornmeal flavor and aroma.
Whenever I see an interesting corn bread recipe, I don’t bother with the basic formula, as I’m confident that no corn bread formula (and I’ve tested a gazillion) is better than Aunt Elfred’s.
Our dear friend Janet Stelzer’s Aunt Elfred must have been one magnificent cook because this cornbread is dynamite. I spent years testing dozens of promising cornbread recipes, never quite achieving the light, tender goodness of Aunt Elfred’s superlative version.
Connect with LunaCafe