Read The Cornbread Gospels Online
Authors: Crescent Dragonwagon
The Cornbread Gospels (18 page)
When the dough is mixed, add ½ to ⅔ cup whole-milk ricotta cheese, in little dabs. Stir it in gently, so there are still little discernible bits of ricotta. Bake as directed. “They are delicious; I love them,” says Leyla.
EYLA
’
S
A
REPAS WITH
T
OFU
Because Leyla has a lactose sensitivity, she came up with these. When the basic dough is mixed, add ½ to ⅔ cup crumbled firm conventional tofu (not silken). Stir it in gently; again, you want little discernible bits of tofu. Bake as directed.
A
REPA
A
CCOMPANIMENTS
Pretty much everyone can figure out what to eat with cornbreads, muffins, and tortillas, but what to eat with arepas? In Latin America, they’re often eaten for breakfast. Hot arepas, well buttered, may accompany a big pile of eggs scrambled with onions and garlic. (
Café con leche
with this, of course.) But simpler and far more common is an arepa as a solo breakfast act, eaten much like a bagel—with butter and cream cheese,
queso fresco,
Manchego,
queso blanco,
mozzarella, or similar white, mild cheese. (This idea has transmogrified, in Miami and South Florida, from
with cheese
, to cheese
included.
Commercial arepa manufacturers in that area add a slice of cheese, sandwiched between two thin disks of masarepa dough, the whole thing to be heated up at home.)
In Bogotá, arepas, hot and slightly smoky from the open-air grills, are sold on every street corner. Classic anytime snack food, they’re usually offered with chorizo sausage, or with carne asada, marinated spicy flank steak moistened with a bit of hot sauce, called
ají,
pronounced ah-HEE. In Venezuela, the beef is shredded; in Colombia, it’s in large pieces, pounded thin for tenderness.
One step up from street food are
pollerías,
popular restaurants where the centerpiece is very tender, garlicky roast chicken. “And you are always asked, when you order it,” says Colombia-born children’s book author Leyla Torres, “whether you want arepa or potato with it.” This is the chicken Leyla had in mind for the picnic in her children’s book,
The Kite Festival
(see quote,
page 99
).
At many Colombian cafés, you can order a special plate, the
bandeja paisa
(meaning “tray of the countryside/region”), which includes what Leyla describes enthusiastically as “all the essentials of your life!”—kidney beans, arepa, rice, fried eggs, browned ground beef, pork rind, fried slices of plantain, a slice of avocado. Or, an arepa might accompany
sancocho,
a spicy, vegetable- and meat-packed stew. I offer you two versions (one vegetarian) of this amazingly hearty stew on
pages 322
and
323
.
In Venezuela, arepas, made a bit thicker than in Colombia, are the mainstay of
areperas,
small restaurants or cafés. There you choose from a variety of fillings: cheese, beef, pork, chicken, eggs, beans, and so on. The hot-from-the-grill arepa is split down the middle (as you would a hamburger bun), a bit of its steaming moist center is scooped out, and it’s stuffed with your choice of filling.
La reina pepiada,
an arepa filled with chopped carne asada, avocado, and cheese, is both traditional and much-loved, any time of the night or day. In fact, the dish is a late-night favorite; go to an
arepera
at 2
A.M.
and you’ll see tired workers getting off late shifts mingling with young, sweaty, well-dressed young people, finishing off a night at the clubs with some arepas.
However, when foods leave their native places and move into new territory, they inevitably commingle with the foods of the new place. To eat arepas with something sweet rather than savory would out-and-out repel most born-and-bred arepa eaters. But Leyla’s American husband, John Sutton, loves his arepas with butter and honey or guava jam.
Me? I’ll pretty much take an arepa anytime, anywhere, and any way.
ROA
(P
ORTUGUESE
C
ORNBREAD
)
M
AKES ONE
9-
OR
10-
INCH ROUND LOAF
This bread was originally a mainstay of medieval Portugal’s poor. Early on it was made of humbler, cheap millet flour, with a bit of the more expensive wheat flour added. When corn—high-yielding and easy to grow—arrived from the New World toward the end of the fifteenth century, it changed the face of Portuguese agriculture. Corn cultivation completely replaced that of millet, and broa became a bread of cornmeal and wheat flour, as it is today.
A simple, plain, fairly dense, round, yeasted loaf, broa is on the dry side, the better to soak up the caldo verde, the soup of kale, beans, and
linguica
or chorizo sausage with which it is most often served. My version of caldo verde appears on
page 318
.
1 cup boiling water
1½ cups stone-ground white cornmeal
1¼ teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
¼ cup lukewarm water, preferably filtered or spring
1 teaspoon sugar
2 cups unbleached white flour, plus a bit for kneading
Vegetable or olive oil cooking spray or additional olive oil
1.
Pour the boiling water over the white cornmeal in a small, heat-proof bowl. Add the salt and olive oil and stir well to moisten the cornmeal. Allow the mixture to sit until lukewarm, about 20 minutes.
2.
Toward the end of the 20 minutes, sprinkle the yeast over the ¼ cup lukewarm water
(I usually leave it in the glass cup in which I measured the water). Add the sugar. Let stand until the yeast mixture is bubbly, about 7 minutes.
3.
Transfer the cornmeal mixture and the yeast mixture to a large bowl, stirring well to combine. Beat in the flour a little at a time, kneading the last part in. Then knead the dough, which will be a little sticky, for about 5 minutes. You may work in a little additional flour if need be, but it will still be on the moist and tacky side. Transfer the dough to a large oiled bowl, cover with a clean towel, and let rise in a warm spot for about 45 minutes.
4.
Punch down the risen dough. Remove it from the bowl and knead a few times, using just a bit more flour if you must.
5.
Spray or oil a 9- or 10-inch cake pan (use a metal pan; glass will brown the crust too swiftly). Form the dough into a round loaf and, pressing it to fit, place it in the oiled pan. Cover first with a sheet of wax paper, then with a clean towel, and let rise in a nice warm spot for a second time, again until doubled. The second rise should run about 35 to 40 minutes. About halfway into that, preheat the oven to 350°F.
6.
Remove the towel and carefully ease off the wax paper from any spots where it might have stuck (you don’t want to deflate the dough). Bake the broa until it is firm-crusted and slightly brown, 40 to 45 minutes. Let it cool slightly on a rack before serving, in wedges.
ARIATION
:
B
LACK
P
EPPER
B
ROA
Several years ago,
Bon Appétit
ran a broa as a cover recipe. The recipe inside was a classic one except for the addition of 1½ teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper. This makes a beautiful, interesting, if untraditional, broa, with a definite bite.
“Very few of us know all the breads of all the countries, uncountable the odd shapes, the subtle flavors, the cunning additions of raisins and currants and citron and poppy seed and sesame and caraway and chopped nuts and spices and salt crystals and sugar. Bread pale green with spinach, bread pale yellow with carrots, zestful orange bread, bread with cornmeal … bread for every taste, or every occasion, the backbone of the anatomy of food.”
—S
OPHIE
K
ERR
,
The Best I Ever Ate
·M·E·N·U·
S
OOTHING A
S
TORMY
M
ONDAY
, P
ORTUGUESE
–S
TYLE
Broa
*
*
A Poached Egg, optional, in each bowl of soup
*
Flan • Crème Caramel
OBOTA
(G
REEK
C
ORNBREAD
)
M
AKES
10
TO
12
SQUARES
Bobota is a truly succulent, very sweet modern-day Greek cornbread, intoxicatingly fragrant as it bakes. As far as I can tell, it seems to have originated in Thessaly, but is now popular all over the country, and you can find both from-scratch and mix-based versions. It is as much cake as it is bread, but it is cake with a decided Greek accent, moist and soaked in an orange and honey syrup. If you like baklava or
revani
(the syrup-soaked Greek walnut cake), you will swoon over this. Serve it as dessert.
Vegetable oil cooking spray
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons unbleached white flour
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons stone-ground yellow cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
4 eggs, separated
½ cup butter, at room temperature
⅓ cup sugar
Finely grated zest of 1 orange, preferably organic
1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice (seeds and large pieces of pulp removed, but not strained)
1 cup currants or raisins
1 recipe Orange-Honey Syrup (
recipe follows
)
1.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Spray a 7½-by-11¾-inch pan with oil, and set aside.
2.
Sift together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, and salt onto a piece of wax paper. Set aside.
3.
In a high-sided non-plastic bowl using scrupulously clean beaters, beat the egg whites until stiff. (See Beating Egg Whites,
page 186
.) Set aside.
4.
Using the same beaters that you used on the egg whites, in a medium bowl, cream together the butter and sugar, beating until fluffy. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time. Add the orange zest.
5.
Add the flour-cornmeal mixture and the orange juice to the creamed butter mixture, stirring until just combined. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold in the egg whites and currants or raisins.
6.
Transfer the batter to the prepared pan, and put it in the oven. Bake until golden brown, firm, and slightly domed in the middle, 35 to 40 minutes. As the cake bakes, prepare the orange-honey syrup.
7.
When the cake is done, remove it from the oven and prick the top all over with a toothpick. Pour the slightly cooled syrup evenly over the cake, dousing it. Let stand 1 to 2 hours before serving.
RANGE
-H
ONEY
S
YRUP
E
NOUGH FOR
1
BOBOTA
½ cup sugar
3 tablespoons honey
Juice from 1 orange plus water to equal 1 cup
Finely grated zest of 1 orange, preferably organic
6 whole cloves
Combine all ingredients in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, turn the heat down to a simmer, and cook until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is a thin syrup, about 4 minutes. Let the syrup cool to room temperature. Remove the cloves, and pour the syrup over the bobota.
