The Cornbread Gospels - Softcover

Dragonwagon, Crescent

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0761119167 ISBN 13: 9780761119166

Publisher: Workman, 2015

Synopsis

“Cornbread? I LOVE cornbread!” For six years, that’s the response Crescent Dragonwagon got when people asked her what she was writing about. Over time, she came to understand: Not only is hot, just baked cornbread delicious, it evokes—powerfully—the heart, soul, and taste of home. There is an abundance of satisfying cornbreads, as Crescent discovered when she followed the cornbread trail from the Appalachians to the Rockies to the Green Mountains. Traveling to family reunions, potlucks, tortilleras, stone-grinding mills, and the National Cornbread Festival in South Pittsburgh, Tennessee, she heard the stories, tasted the breads, learned the secrets. Join her in this overflowing cornucopia: over 200 irresistible recipes for cornbreads, muffins, fritters, pancakes, and go-withs. Cornbreads from below the Mason-Dixon line (Skillet-Sizzled Buttermilk Cornbread, Truman Capote’s Family’s Alabama Cornbread) meet those from above (Durgin-Park Boston Cornbread, Vermont Maple-Sweetened Cornbread). Southwestern offerings—Chou-Chou’s Dallas Hot Stuff Cornbread, delectable homemade tamales, and tortillas from scratch—meet internationals like India’s Makki Ki Roti. A Thanksgiving with Crescent’s Sweet-Savory Cornbread Dressing is rapturous. Desserts like Very Lemony Gorgeous Cornmeal Pound Cake make any meal exceptional. Along with this, Crescent gives us the greens, the beans, the salads, stews, and soups that accompany cornbread to perfection. And she tells us the stories, too. Enthusiastic and heartfelt, this thoughtful, exuberant love song to America’s favorite breadstuff and all that goes with it will embrace readers and cooks everywhere.

About this title

About the Author

Crescent Dragonwagon is the James Beard Award–winning author of seven cookbooks, including Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread Cookbook, Passionate Vegetarian, and, most recently, The Cornbread Gospels. She is also a contributing editor to Relish magazine and has appeared on Good Morning America, Today and NPR’s The Splendid Table. She lives, grows, and cooks her beans on a farm in Putney, Vermont.

Reviews

This surprising, eccentric volume is full of curious anecdotes, history and cornbread lore, from tales of the Native Americans teaching Pilgrims to make cornbread, to stories of slaves living on little but "ash cakes," corn patties baked in the ashes of a fire. Most intriguing (and delicious) are the recipes themselves, which span the globe to find the happy taste of cornmeal in dozens of novel incarnations. Vermont Maple-Sweetened Cornbread is a classic, a medium-sweet skilletful of steaming yellow bread that makes a wonderful companion to baked beans or a mellow soup. Savory Onion-Scallion Corn Cakes are a spicy variation on the theme, livened up with a fresh green chile. Many recipes are for cornbread accompaniments, like a Golden Gazpacho that turns garden vegetables and lots of corn into an all-American version of the Spanish soup, and Patsy's Cornbread Salad, which mixes chunks of tomato, bacon and onion with cornbread for a Southern take on the Italian bread salad called panzanella. The most exciting corn-themed dishes come from less expected places: the labor-intensive but phenomenally flavorful Sancocho is a South American stew, and African Vegetable Mafe is dense with peanut butter and sauteed vegetables, perfect for sopping up.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Workman
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0761119167
• ISBN 13: 9780761119166
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 390