With love from Taryn…
Hello. This week in Table Travellers we made Cornbread and Homemade BBQ Baked Beans. Our friends were staying with friends of theirs in Washington at Christmas and they posted a picture of some yummy looking Cornbread that their friend had made. He sent us his recipe and here is our version of it. They ate it with Chilli so we made Baked Beans instead since we didn’t have all the ingredients for Chilli and Mum didn’t have time to get to the shops today.
I really really loved the cornbread – especially when it was warm out of the oven. I found the Baked Beans a bit too strongly flavoured but they were still nice.
Have a great week!
Love,
Taryn
From Heather
I’ve read rather a lot of fiction from James Scott-Bell, John Grisham, Randy Alcorn and Robert Whitlow – and they all mention Southern (American) food in their books. I’ve always loved to find out, and sometime trial these things. Their biscuits are not our biscuits (they are our scones), their collard greens are entirely foreign to us, and their pumpkin pie – is delicious but I still don’t really understand if it’s a side dish, or a dessert!
Anyway, I have tried several recipes for cornbread but never kept a record of which recipes worked well and which were disastrous. But this one was the best, is now recorded, and will definitely be repeated.
See y’all later!
Heather
PS This is not entirely relevant, except if I think of Food + Southern I somehow come up with Granny May. So if you loved Beverly Hillbillies, listen to “Vittles” here 🙂
Nathan’s Corn Bread – adjusted for Australian cooks
2 cups SR flour
1 1/2 cups cornmeal or polenta
3 heaped desert spoons brown sugar
1 tsp salt
4 beaten eggs
2 cups milk
Mix dry ingredients in large bowl.
Mix wet ingredients in another bowl.
Melt 1/2 cup butter in large heavy oven dish and spread over base and up the sides ready for the batter.
Add wet ingredients to dry – all at once – and stir as minimally as possible till just combined.
Pour into hot pan. Bake in moderate oven 15-20 minutes till skewer comes out clean when inserted.
BBQ Baked Beans
2 cups dry kidney beans – simmer in 6 cups of water for two hours
DO NOT FORGET TO DRAIN & WASH THE BEANS. The jokes about beans creating gas issues have never been so true as with home cooked beans!
2 onions, peeled, chopped and cooked till translucent in big heavy baking dish.
1 chopped capsicum if desired (cook with onion)
Transfer the beans into the dish with the onions. Add the remaining ingredients and stir through.
Using a combination or variation of the following will result in something delicious and unique every time 🙂
1/2 cup brown sugar or other sweetener. Half that measure of maple syrup or honey would also be good.
250 ish grams bacon chopped
1 generous teaspoon dried garlic
2 tins chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup BBQ sauce
Several good shakes of Worcestershire Sauce
1 teaspoon mustard1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon chilli sauce
Bake in moderate oven for 5-6 hours. Stir and check liquid level from time to time. Top up with water if evaporating too much.
