A good friend once told me, "You do not need any more cornmeal."

She took me by the shoulders, looked me straight in the eyes.

"Cassie. If you are ever at the grocery store and think, 'Yeah. I should buy cornmeal. Cornmeal!', just put the cornmeal down. And walk away."

I don't think that I cook with cornmeal very often, and I think this is the problem: when I do want to cook with cornmeal, I think, "Surely I don't have any cornmeal!" And thus when I was rearranging my pantry this past weekend, I discovered that I do, in fact, HAVE CORNMEAL.

I've been wanting to make Deborah Madison's black bean chili (from The Greens Cookbook) for quite some time, and I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to use up some of my Bob's Red Mill Stoneground Cornmeal. This is a very special cornmeal - it's much coarser, yes, but still somehow so soft, and it has these beautiful little flecks of red and blue from the corn hull, that helps me to understand how it came from real corn. I've used it to make the best polenta ever, really (I've been meaning to return to that cornmeal, and I'll write about it, too, but I think it will have to wait for cooler days). The cornbread I made to go with the chili (which was also excellent) was unusually savory, and just as moist as cornbread should be; we slathered on some honey butter with a sprinkle of cinnamon.

But the miracle happened on Monday night when I decided to show those cornbread leftovers a night out on the grill pan. I love my new Lodge cast iron grill pan; it's the sort of thing that words can't really touch upon, so it's probably best if you just buy one yourself and Taste The Wonderment. May I suggest a recipe?

Stonegound Cornbread Grilled in Honey and Cinnamon
(the recipe for the cornbread itself is culled from quite a few others, and this execution is my very own, so no credits to anyone but me, ha!)

Cornbread:
1 1/4 cup Bob's Red Mill Organic Cornmeal, Medium Grind
3/4 cup unbleached all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup whole milk
1 egg
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted.

Preheat oven to 375. In a large bowl, whisk dry ingredients. In a smaller bowl, whisk together milk and egg, and then add to dry ingredients, followed by melted butter. Pour into a buttered bread pan, and bake for 20 minutes, or until done in the center. Allow to cool for at least 10 minutes on a rack before removing from the pan. If you're feeling fatigued from all that work, you could now eat about half the cornbread, but you'll need to save some for the rest of the recipe...

Honey Butter with Cinnamon:
4 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon cinnamon
(this could also be nice with some other touches to the butter, might I suggest nutmeg or lavender?)

Preheat a cast iron grill pan to medium-high heat. In a small pan, heat butter, honey and cinnamon until just melted. Remove from heat.

Slice cornbread into 1 1/2 inch slices, and then GENEROUSLY (because it's honey butter with cinnamon, silly, and everybody wants a lot of that action) brush one side of each piece of cornbread with melted butter.

Place cornbread slices, butter side down, on hot grill. Listen to that loving sizzle! The pan loves honey butter with cinnamon too! Generously brush unbuttered sides of cornbread with butter.

Now gently but deftly flip cornbread after about one and a half minutes, when the crunchy! glorious! crackly! grill marks have, like magic, appeared on bread, and continue to grill for another minute or so. You'll have to be delicate, or else you'll break your beautiful cornbread slices.

Like I did. Boo. But we still ate them all up!



No pictures yet. Apparently the lighting in my kitchen just won't do for proper photography.