Cornbread: The Shot Glass Way

How many times have you said to yourself, “Self, what would I do if my only cooking implements were a shot glass, a bowl, and a cast iron skillet, and I really wanted to make some cornbread? Would I be fucked, or what?”

Thanks to the revolutionary method of cooking cornbread you are about to learn, the answer will now be “or what,” although to be honest life is probably not so good for reasons having nothing to do with cornbread if you find yourself in this situation. The way this revolutionary method works is, you measure things with a shot glass instead of with a measuring cup. Note that when I say a shot in the recipe, I mean a big shot class filled to the brim—one of those 2 fluid ounce ones, which is a quarter cup.*

Ingredients:

• 5 shots flour
• 3 shots cornmeal
• 1 shot sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder**
• Hefty dash of salt
• 4 shots buttermilk
• 1 shot vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• Butter

If you’re going to be drinking while you cook this, you should probably use a different shot glass for that, or wait until you finish using the main shot glass for measurements. I don’t know what whiskey does to cornbread.

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Or so. Why are gas ovens always so hard to calibrate?
2. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.
3. Beat the egg. Add the buttermilk and vegetable oil.
4. Grease the living shit out of your skillet (or pan, if you prefer) with butter. I’m talking like three coats of butter all over that sumbitch. This is how the goodness gets in the crust.
5. Mix the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients. SPECIAL BONUS TIP: Don’t do this until you’re ready to put it in the oven. Once you mix them the baking powder starts doing its thing, and if you let it sit around for a while it’ll go flat. I used to have this happen when I would pre-mix a second batch while the first cooked, until my old landlady Laura set me straight.
6. Put the goop in the skillet, put the skillet in the oven.
7. This nominally takes 20-25 minutes to cook. If your oven sucks as much as mine, you just gotta be on your toes. Check it starting at 15 minutes or so—you’re going for that point where a fork comes out clean from the middle. Err on the side of caution.
8. De-oven, de-heat, de-skillet. Breakfast for a week!

Also, just in case you wanted them, here are the results of some of my experiments with this recipe.

• The half-flour/half-cornmeal variant: This is the one with four shots apiece of flour and cornmeal. Some recipes recommend it, and I used to do it a bunch cause it kind of seems more authentic (corn bread oughta really be about corn, you know?), but I just don’t think it’s as good. Kind of grittier, and tastes less sweet.
• The milk/buttermilk decision: Your standard cornbread recipe is going to call for milk instead of buttermilk. Why you would ever use milk when you could use buttermilk totally escapes me. Plus I used to make it that way, and it is definitely better with buttermilk.
• The vegan edition: You can substitute some banana for the egg. I did this once, and nothing disastrous happened.
• The maximum butter option: In general, if you want to make things better, add more butter. In this case, you can replace the vegetable oil with melted butter. Personally I don’t do this much because it’s a pain in the ass to melt the butter, and also I’m worried about getting addicted.
• The forgot-to-add-salt mistake: Why is salt so forgettable? I know, most recipes say it’s optional. But cornbread just ain’t the same without it. I throw salt onto the cornbread when I eat it if I forget about this.
• The more baking powder way: imagine if your cornbread was carbonated. That’s basically what happens, texture-wise, if you go with the three tsp of baking soda that some recipes recommend. You might be into that.
• There are ways to make sweeter cornbread. Personally I’m a bit fearful about mucking with the sugar : grains ratio, but other bolder souls might want to try some experiments.
*For those who prefer non-shot measurements:

• 1 ¼ cups flour
• ¾ cup cornmeal
• ¼ cup sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• Hefty dash of salt
• 1 cup buttermilk
• ¼ cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• Butter

**I know, I didn’t mention any teaspoon. That’s because it sounds less cool. It is a non-canonical teaspoon.

Also, I broke the fonts and they won't get un-broke. Oh well.

Rob's Mother f**king Bean Salad

My buddy Rob is in Philly this summer and has absolutely no time to post this fabulous recipe on our blog, so I'm doing it for him.

Rob, during our brief foray as roommates, survived on a simple diet of this bean salad and cornbread. He claims that when the black beans are combined with cornmeal, it makes a perfect protein. Sounds like a bunch of pseudoscience bullsh*t to me, but Rob's a smart guy, so I trust him.

I'll make Rob post the cornbread recipe when he gets back.

Anyway, I've made this recipe about twenty times this summer and I never get tired of it. Try it. You'll like it.

If you don't like it, please don't post stupid comments saying you don't like it because you probably just f**ed up the recipe and you should probably just blame yourself for f**ing up such an easy recipe.

Ingredients

15 oz black beans
2 ears of corn (boiled or roasted, kernels cut off the cob)
2 avocados
2 whole diced tomatoes (or 15-20 cherry/grape/sungold tomatoes)
2/3 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
2/3 cup red onions
Feta cheese (optional)

Dressing

1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tsp dijon mustard
2 cloves garlic, chopped
salt to taste
1 tbsp ground cumin


Combine ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Whisk together the dressing separately and pour in. I like mixing it so that the avocado blends to become part of the dressing, but if you like the avocado pieces whole, just toss the salad together lightly instead of mashing everything.

This salad is so freaking tasty. I serve it with toasted bread that comes from the bakery next to my house, Canto 6, but you can serve it with rice, quinoa, couscous, or any other kind of grain. Makes a great main course, but certainly could be a side-dish for a BBQ.

Best part, if you refrigerate it, the herbs/spices have more time to soak in and it makes the salad even tastier.

Enjoy that sheezy!

John's Motherf**ing Gazpacho

So I got really into gardening this summer, and it just so happens that the vegetables that I'm growing in my garden coincide almost precisely with the essential ingredients of a good gazpacho (Spanish cold tomato soup).

I was first introduced to gazpacho when I was 17 and spent a summer in La Coruna, Spain, which is in the northwest corner in the province of Galicia. The mother of the family I stayed with, "Loli," an adorable woman who my mother still keeps in touch with, was, typical of most Spanish families, also an amazing cook.

To my credit, I was an amazing guest, and was open to any and all new Spanish foods that she could serve me, including a dish called "Chipirones en su tinta," or mini-squids in their own ink (I remember it being delicious, but it sounds pretty raunch).

Gazpacho, ironically, was the only thing that Loli didn't make from scratch. In Spain, it came in a carton like milk or orange juice (Don Simon was the brand), and you would just pour it out and add a garnish. However, I liked it so much that I asked Loli to teach me the recipe. It was way better fresh.

In any case, during that summer, and during all summers since, I love a cold gazpacho on a hot day. Nothing more refreshing, and it's full of delicious, fresh ingredients that typically grow during the summer. I feel like it was probably invented when a Spanish farmer threw a bunch of his summer vegetables into a pot, and just added some vinegar and olive oil to make it tastier because that's all this recipe is.

So here goes:

Ingredients

4 fresh tomatoes (I used the ones in my garden - Roma and Heirloom)
1/2 large bell pepper
1 cucumber
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
3 cloves garlic
herbs/salt/pepper to taste

Garnish:

Any of the ingredients above, diced
Corn
Bread crumbs
Goat cheese

All you do to make gazpacho is put all of the above ingredients into a food processor and liquefy. Pretty simple. If you want it more liquid-y, then you can add V8 or tomato juice, but I prefer mine thick. You can also add more of any of the ingredients or change the proportions to alter the flavor. For example, I like it with more tomatoes and vinegar, but a lot of gazpachos have a lot more cucumbers than the one I've outlined above.

When I was in spain, we would always serve it with fresh bread, and we would have little dishes with diced ingredients (peppers, tomatoes, corn, bread crumbs, cheese, etc.), and you would take a little of each and put it on top of your bowl of gazpacho. Then, when you were done, you would grab a slice of bread and wipe your bowl clean. Damn that shit was incredible....

Homemade Vegetable Stock

For those of us who cringe at food waste, this is a great way to clear your conscience and clear your fridge of those squishy, sponge-like vegetables that are pleading to be thrown away.

When you find that it's make or break time with the vegetables in your fridge, it's time to make a vegetable stock. This recipe is adapted from many different veggie stock recipes, but the most basic one I found was on Allrecipes.com here.

You can also use all of the vegetable waste that you don't use during the week when cooking. Usually, I'll just compost all that sheezy, but if I know I'm making a veggie stock at the end of the week, I'll keep all those stems, leaves, tops, bottoms, cores, etc. that I would normally toss out.

So here's my basic recipe:

Ingredients:

1 Onion
8 cloves garlic
Squishy leftover veggies
Tasty herbs (I recommend fresh parsley, thyme, rosemary, and basil if you've got it. Otherwise, dried herbs are fine)
Leftover veggie stems, assorted parts
2 quarts water (or just eyeball it)
3 tsp salt (or to taste)

So first you want to create a roasty-toasty flavor in the vegetables, so you start sauteeing or roasting whatever vegetables you have + the herbs. You can do this over a stovetop, or you can slice and dice everything and put it in the oven. Doesn't matter.

You should sautee/roast for about 10 minutes. The important thing to remember is that the more surface area that's exposed, the more flavor can come out of the vegetables, so slice and dice as finely as you can. You can even just plop everything into a food processor.

After you sautee/roast, throw in the water and the salt and bring to a boil. Then simmer for a couple of hours. During this time, you can do your laundry, read a book (I'm reading "Eating Animals," by Jonathan Safran Foer right now). During this time, you'll smell an enchanting aroma wafting from your kitchen. This is a good thing and means that your broth/stock will be really freaking tasty.

Once it's simmered for a couple of hours, take it off the stovetop and strain it. Voila! Veggie broth.

So freaking simple and a great building block ingredient for many many recipes. My next post I'll dedicate to doing a recipe that requires this broth.

Motherf**king Black bean Brownies

I got the idea for this recipe this weekend after I visited Plato's Harvest Farms where our intern Sasha and her husband David own and operate an organic farm. We got there at 10am, planted potatoes, spring onions, and leeks and enjoyed a delicious pot-luck lunch, the crowning feature of which was one of the farm hands' incredible black bean brownies. I immediately asked her what she put in them, she gave me the basic run-down and when I came home I did some research into recipes.

I took a recipe off of 101 Cookbooks.com and modified it to include all that tasty shit that the farm hand said was in hers. This is the result:

Amazing Black Bean Brownie Recipe

4 ounces semisweet chocolate
1 cup unsalted butter (I put in a vegan butter subsitute)
1 can of black beans, well drained
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
¼ cup ground coffee or espresso
¼ teaspoon sea salt
4 large eggs
1 cup maple syrup

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line a 9x9 inch greased pan.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a glass bowl in the microwave for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes on high. Stir with a spoon to melt the chocolate completely. Place the beans, 1/2 cup of the walnuts, the vanilla extract, and a couple of spoonfuls of the melted chocolate mixture into the bowl of a food processor. Blend about 2 minutes, or until smooth. The batter should be thick and the beans smooth. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the remaining 1/2 cup walnuts, remaining melted chocolate mixture, coffee substitute, and salt. Mix well and set aside.

In a separate bowl, with an electric mixer beat the eggs until light and creamy, about 1 minute. Add the agave nectar and beat well. Set aside.

Add the bean/chocolate mixture to the coffee/chocolate mixture. Stir until blended well.

Add the egg mixture, reserving about 1/2 cup. Mix well. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Using an electric mixer, beat the remaining 1/2 cup egg mixture until light and fluffy. Drizzle over the brownie batter. Use a wooden toothpick to pull the egg mixture through the batter, creating a marbled effect. Bake for 40-50 minutes, until the brownies are set. Let cool in the pan completely before cutting into squares. (They will be soft until refrigerated.)

Makes 45 (2-inch) brownies.

Banana Walnut Pancakey Goodness

This is a simple home-made pancake recipe modified with some tasty things I had in the house...

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1 1/4 cups milk
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 or 2 bananas, mashed
  
• two handfuls of chopped walnuts
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
  

Directions

1. In a large bowl, put all dry ingredients and the banana together. Make a well in the center and pour in the milk, egg and melted butter (I've substituted olive oil for this recipe and it works great); mix until smooth.
2. Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium high heat. Pour or scoop the batter onto the griddle, using approximately 1/4 cup for each pancake. Brown on both sides and serve hot.

Vegan Veggie Burgers

Making veggie burgers without eggs can be a challenge but I found this sweet recipe for vegan veggie burgers on a highschooler's blog.

• 2-3 tortillas, toasted (depending on size)
• 15 oz can lentils (or 3/4 c. lentils, cooked)
• 15 oz can black beans
• 1 tbsp chia seeds
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 3 cloves minced garlic
• 1/2 tsp organic vegetable bouillon base
• 1/2 tsp liquid smoke
• 2 cups broccoli florets*
• 1 red bell pepper, roasted*
• 1 tsp xanthen gum (optional)
• Salt, pepper and paprika
• 1/3- 1/2 c. bread crumbs

The list below is what I made it with, topped with kale, and with squash and sweet potato soup and homemade bread on the side. I think the burgers would definitely be better with bell peppers and a little mustard though.

• 3/4 c. lentils, cooked
• a jalepeno and another tiny spicy pepper
• 1.5 cans black beans
• 1 can garbanzos
  
• 3 cloves minced garlic
• minced onions
  
• 1/2 tsp organic vegetable bouillon base
• 1/2 tsp liquid smoke
• Salt, pepper
• 1/3- 1/2 c. bread crumbs

After packing it all together, I rolled each burger in breadcrumbs again which gave them a nice crispy outside. Cooked 'em at 375 for about 30 min.