A Corny Sidekick For Your Next Pot of Soup

One thing I love to do is mix up a batch of cornbread to accompany a big pot of soup or stew. As simple as it is to make, it doesn't always happen because it's even easier to slice off a few hunks of the fabulous sourdough bread that Dave cranks out like clockwork every couple of weeks. But there's nothing more satisfying than throwing some simple ingredients in a bowl, giving them a few gentle turns by hand and pouring it into a pie pan, then pulling it out of the oven just before ladling out the soup.

Made with Ayers Creek 8-Row Flint Corn.

Of course, I'm a devotée of the coarse cornmeal ground from the organic flint corn grown by Anthony and Carol Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm, with its flecks of red, orange and yellow and its deeply corn-y flavor, but regular cornmeal works, too. I've also baked it using their Peace No War—PNW, as in Pacific Northwest, get it?—purple cornmeal (top photo), which gives it a mahogany tinge and is no less flavorful. But whatever cornmeal you choose, and whatever form you choose (it's wonderful as a loaf, in a round cake or pie tin, or even muffins), definitely give this a try with your next pot of soup.

Check out these fantastic, simple soup recipes.

Cheesy Cornbread

1 c. flour
1 c. cornmeal
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 c. milk or buttermilk
2 Tbsp. melted butter
2 eggs
1 c. sharp cheddar cheese
1 large green chile, chopped (optional)

Preheat oven to 400°.

In large mixing bowl, combine dry ingredients. Stir in milk and melted butter. Add eggs, cheese and chile (if using). Grease and flour baking pan or muffin tin. Pour in batter. Bake 18 to 20 minutes, until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Note: You can also add cumin, a teaspoon of red pepper flakes, some chopped green onions or one-third cup drained corn. It's a very flexible recipe.

A Tamale Pie My Mother Would Recognize

Before Blue Apron and Purple Carrot, there was Hamburger Helper and Swanson's frozen dinners. Before that, in the days of yore when I was growing up, when my father didn't have time to hunt down a brontosaurus, my mother made do with Campbell's cream of mushroom soup and an arsenal of Lipton's dehydrated products. Spanish rice, tuna casserole and pot roast were her go-to dinners, egged on by the women's magazines of the day like the Ladies Home Journal that—shades of Betty Draper—gave busy homemakers tips on "quick dinners your family will love!"

Tamale pie was one of those dinner solutions, though in the days when most Americans considered spaghetti sauce "spicy food," its call for the addition of chili powder was a bridge too far for many. But my dad loved him some zing, so my mom would occasionally pep up her dinner rotation with chili powder-inflected goulash or tacos with hot sauce.

I'd been looking for a tamale pie recipe for those times when I'm feeling a bit of nostalgia for the casserole dinners of my childhood, and my friend Lizzy shared one recently that brought back a flood of cornmeal-scented, cheesy memories. Updated with a few adaptations using local cornmeal and grassfed beef, locally grown and roasted tomatoes and some tangy cheddar from Face Rock Creamery in Bandon, it fit the bill perfectly. I hope it will for you, too!

Tamale Pie

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 onion
2 poblano peppers, chopped in 1/4” dice
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 lbs. ground meat (beef, chicken or turkey)
2 c. roasted tomatoes
2 c. corn kernels
1/2 c. chicken stock
2 tsp. ancho chile powder
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 c. cornmeal
1 c. grated cheddar or jack cheese
Salt to taste

Preheat oven to 350°.

Heat oil in large skillet over medium high heat. (If using cast iron skillet, you can bake the casserole in it, as well.) When it shimmers, add ground meat and sauté until the meat is browned. Add onion and sauté until tender, about 3 minutes. Add garlic and pepper and sauté until softened, about 5 minutes. Add chile powder and cumin and stir briefly, then add tomatoes, corn kernels and broth. Bring to a simmer. Salt to taste.

While meat mixture simmers, bring 2 cups water to a boil. Slowly add cornmeal, stirring vigorously to prevent lumping. (Mixture will be quite thick.) Add 1 teaspoon salt, or to taste. Stir cornmeal mixture into other ingredients. Put mixture into casserole (if you are using a cast iron skillet, you can bake the casserole in this). Sprinkle cheese over the top and bake about 30 minutes.

Here's another version of tamale pie with a cornbread topping.

Shelling Corn the Old-Fashioned Way

There's the easy way and then there's the slow way. In describing how Anthony and Carol Boutard process the Roy's Calais Flint corn they grow at Ayers Creek Farm, I said that Carol used a hand-cranked, cast iron corn sheller to take the dried kernels off the corncobs.

Roy's Calais Flint corn…beautiful!

Yesterday it was my turn to learn how that part of the process works by helping Anthony shell and clean 10 large bags of corn, ending up with 175 pounds of shelled corn kernels.

Why don't they just buy an automated machine that would do the same job faster and easier? Anthony said that at a cost of more than $20,000 and at their scale of production it doesn't make economic sense. That means the old hand-cranked sheller is assured of many more seasons of work.

A Pound of Cornmeal, A Whole Lot of Work

I'd gone to Ayers Creek Farm to help with some chores, but the first thing I did was to head out behind the house where I knew Anthony had his telescope set up. This time of year it's focused on the top of an old snag about a hundred yard from the house in a grove of firs. Looking through the eyepiece, I could see three fluffy grey humps. One hump shook itself and turned into the sunlight that was just coming up over the hills to the east. Piercing golden eyes lit up, and when I whooped the other two humps turned and I was the one who was being watched.

I tore myself away from the three great horned owlets when I heard Carol starting up the gator to head over to the shed—actually a large new processing barn for the corn, beans and berries that are grown on the farm—to help grind 120 pounds of flint corn needed for the week's deliveries to some of Portland's best restaurants. Carol escorted me to the back room of the shed and introduced me to my companion for the day, a small corn mill (top video and left) that, shaking and rattling, has ground their signature Roy's Calais Flint cornmeal for the past several years.

If you've ever heard the words "artisan" or "slow food" or gone to the farmers' market and wondered how a farmer could charge several dollars for a one-pound bag of organic corn meal, I have your answer. Let's not go into the several years it takes to develop the perfect corn for your climate that grows well, is resistant to local pests and yes, tastes good, too. The year before planting, thousands of that season's harvest are sorted to find just the right kernels to use for seed for the next season's crop. When the next spring arrives, it's time to prepare the fields, plant the kernels and make sure the plants survive to maturity. In late summer the corn is harvested, the stalks are stripped, the cobs are dried for several months and then sorted to find the very best ones to grind into cornmeal.

Those selected cobs are bagged and stored until it's time to grind the corn, which is where I entered the picture. Carol had put the cobs through a hand-cranked cast iron corn sheller that removed the dried kernels, then run them through a cleaner that removed the silks and other debris from the shelling process. The crates of shelled kernels were stacked next to my grinder friend, and it would be my job to turn the machine on, fill the hopper with kernels and watch as they dribbled down through the grinder, each hopper-full filling the bucket at the bottom with around 10 pounds of cornmeal.

After the bucket was filled and I'd set it up for the next batch—it took about 20 minutes or so to run the full hopper through the grinder—I turned on the machine and then headed into the main room with the bucket of cornmeal. Each batch of the ground meal had to be hand-sieved through a mesh-bottomed frame with handles at each end, which meant dumping about three pounds at a time into the sieve and shaking it into a tub until all the meal had filtered out, leaving a pile of larger corn bits and husks from the kernels.

The sieved cornmeal was still slightly warm from the grinding, and the smell of the freshly ground corn was like fresh tortillas or a warm pot of polenta—distilled comfort. After each bucket had been sieved, I scooped the meal into a tub to weigh it out into five-pound portions that I bagged and labeled. Then it was time to run back to the grinder for the next bucket, take it out of the grinder, put in a fresh bucket and refill the hopper. Did I mention that this had to be done for 120 pounds? Right.

By mid-afternoon, having paused for a lunch on the patio of lamby-licious shawarma wraps from Izgara in nearby Forest Grove, the crates were filled with bulging bags of cornmeal ready for delivery. Baptized from head to toe in cornmeal dust, I drove back to town with a new appreciation for what it took to produce those little one-pound bags of cornmeal waiting for me on my next trip to the market.

Thrill from Brazil

I am deeply indebted to the early hominids. Why, you might ask? Well, aside from their discovery of tools, writing and the internet (yes, Al Gore is human, despite any indications to the contrary), they came up with the brilliant idea of the pot luck, gatherings where each family group brings a food item to share.

At a recent gathering of hominids in our back yard, my friend Judy, who lived in Brazil while her husband taught at a university there, brought a Brazilian dish from Sao Paulo called, naturally, Cuscuz Paulista. A savory dish made with cornmeal and mixed with meat and vegetables, it is steamed in a colander and unmolded onto a platter before serving.

Like the Italian timbale or, for that matter, my mother's molded jello salad, the outside is often elaborately decorated with sliced hearts of palm, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes or roasted peppers. And, as was intended, it elicited admiring "oohs" and "aahs" from the other members of our little taxonomic gathering.

Chicken Cuscuz or Cuscuz de Galinha
Adapted from Brazilian Cookery by Margarette de Andrade

Judy reminded me that cuscuz, like potato salad, differs from household to household, and ingredients can be adjusted to whatever you have on hand. It can also be made with chicken, animal meat, fish or shrimp, so have fun and create your own unique version.

For the cornmeal:
4 c. white cornmeal
1 c. boiling salted water
1/4 lb. (1 stick) butter or 1/2 c. olive oil (?)

For the cuscuz:
1 stewed chicken (or store-bought rotisserie chicken)
1 1/2 c. gravy or stock
2 or 3 malagueta peppers, pounded (optional)
1/2 c. melted butter or olive oil
1/4 c. parsley, chopped
Cornmeal mixture
1/2 lb. smoked pork sausages, fried, or leftover meat
1 lb. peas, cooked
1 10-oz. can hearts of palm, sliced
3 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
3 tomatoes, sliced
Olives, sliced
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350°. Put cornmeal in shallow baking dish and place in oven for 5 minutes, stirring 3 or 4 times with a long-handled spoon so that the meal bakes evenly. As soon as the meal begins to turn a light beige, remove from the oven, sprinkle 1 c. of the boiling salted water over it, stir well with a fork and return to the oven for 2 minutes. The meal should then have irregular flakes. Add 1/4 lb. butter (or olive oil) and mix well.

Heat boned chicken with gravy or stock, add peppers, butter (or olive oil), parsley and correct the seasoning. Remove from heat, add cornmeal mixture, knead, then add sausages or leftover meat. If you can form a small ball with the mixture that will retain its shape, it is of the proper consistency. If it is too dry, moisten with more stock or water.

Traditionally made in a cuscuzeiro, a sort of large double boiler with perforations in the upper section, you can assemble your cuscuz in a medium-sized colander.

First layer: Oil the bottom and sides of the cuscuzeiro or colander and arrange sliced tomatoes, eggs and olives in a symmetrical design, along with a little of the meal mixture. [Judy included 1 tin of anchovies, which added its umami to the finished dish - KAB]

Second layer: Add more meal mixture, press against the sides and bottom, then cover with the peas, palm hearts tomatoes, eggs and olives and alternate with the meal mixture until all ingredients are used. Cover with a cloth napkin or top with a layer of fresh kale or collards.

Place an inverted cake pan in the bottom of a large saucepan or Dutch oven, then pour in boiling water so that it covers the bottom of the saucepan or oven and comes halfway up the side of the cake pan. Place colander on top of the cake pan, making sure the water does not touch the colander. Tightly cover the pot and steam on top of the stove until the napkin is very wet or the kale and collards are cooked, about 20 minutes. Remove the napkin (or greens) and let the cuscuz stand for approximately 10 minutes. Unmold by placing a serving platter upside down on top of the colander and carefully flip them over. Lightly tap the colander to release the cuscuz. Remove the colander and garnish with slices of orange or more slices of hearts of palm. Serve with a bottle of Brazilian hot sauce, Tabasco or other pepper sauce on the side.