Ham and cheese cornbread - oh my word!

I was looking for some sort of carbohydrate to go with the BBQ Meat Loaf (see previous blog post), that didn't involve potato when I hit upon this little beauty.

I knew that all the family like cornbread, so there was no problem there.  We all love cheese and ham - and the spring onions that were used in it would be well cooked, so no problem there either.  All that was left to do was to include it on the menu plan on a day when I could split the cooking, as trying to do cornbread and a meatloaf at the same time would not only pickle my brains, but pretty much leave me good for nothing thereafter.

So - Saturday it was!  A perfect day, being between the healthy fish dish and our roast chicken that's planned for tomorrow.  Lots of time to split the cooking, too.

Now I have a cornbread recipe on the blog already, however, I just had a little scan around the interwebs for alternatives more as a control to make sure my recipe was as good as it could get.  What did I find?  Well, this recipe here - Iron Skillet Ham & Cheddar Cornbread.  Do click on the link, as the Melissa's Southern Style Kitchen blog it came from, is filled with luscious things that are well worth investigating further!

Needless to say, I don't have an iron skillet.  However, a cornbread recipe is a cornbread recipe and I reckoned it wouldn't hurt it to be cooked in the usual tin that I cook my cornbread in, in the oven.  I also skipped on things like onion powder and garlic powder, neither of which I particularly like - and decided not to include the sweetcorn.  Everything else, I went with (I think!).

Just look at that - all beautiful and fluffy!

The measurements are in cups as they often are with American recipes, which gave me the opportunity of using my ceramic measuring cups that my parents had given to me for Christmas.  They're a lovely shape and have a great handle that is easy to hold - very useful when your gripping function isn't as great as it could be and you're carrying a cup full of flour!

As with all cornbread recipes, it's a simple matter of combining the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in another bowl, then adding one to the other and including your flavourings.

I found that I didn't have quite enough buttermilk, so included a couple of tablespoonfuls of Greek Yoghurt.  They're pretty interchangeable for a recipe like this and it certainly didn't appear to do any damage!

I also reduced the sugar from 3 tablespoonfuls (yikes!) to 2 when I was copying out the recipe.  However, by the time it came to putting the sugar into the mix, I decided to decrease it even further by a half a tablespoonful - and I reckon I could have just gone with the one!  I'll be doing that in future and have reflected it in the recipe below.  By all means add more if you like your cornbread sweeter.

Served with BBQ meat loaf and baked beans

I spent a moment or two dithering as to whether to use sunflower oil or rapeseed oil in the mix.  The rapeseed won, entirely due to its increased health benefits of being low in saturated fats (50% less than olive oil!) and high in Omega 3, 6 and 9.  Although as I reflected when pouring it into the mix, it tastes better too!

Do remember to invest a little time in buttering your tin (I covered mine with silver foil to help with the washing up later on) as it makes the cornbread so much easier to get out of the tin - and makes the crust taste amazing!

Again, do be careful of the amount of salt you include - cornbread can take a good deal of salt as the corn meal needs a decent amount to help the corny flavour along.  Do remember, however, that you're including mature cheddar cheese which can be inherently salty, along with the ham which also has a degree of saltiness.  However, having said that, it didn't stop me from sprinkling just a teensy bit of sea salt on the surface for that lovely salty hit every so often.

Just 25-30 minutes in the oven and your tastebuds are tingling from both the look and the smell of this gorgeous cornbread.  Too bad we all had to wait until dinner time to get lashed into it!

HAM AND CHEESE CORNBREAD   (makes 16 pieces approx)

Ingredients :

3-4 slices dry cured ham, diced
100g mature cheddar cheese, grated
4-5 spring onions, chopped
1 cup plain flour
1 cup cornmeal
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp sea salt (plus a tiny pinch to sprinkle on top)
one and three quarters cups of buttermilk (or plain yoghurt)
a quarter of a cup of rapeseed oil
2 large eggs, beaten
a knob of softened butter.

Method :

1.  Use the knob of butter to grease a medium sized oblong roasting tin.

2.  Combine all the dry ingredients into a large bowl.

3.  Combine all the wet ingredients into a smaller bowl.

4.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir quickly until almost combined.

5.  Add the cheese, ham and onions and stir through quickly.

6.  Pour the batter into the roasting tin and level the surface.  Dot with a little extra butter if you're feeling naughty.

7.  Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200degC/400degF/Gas 6 for 25-30 minutes or until a cocktail stick inserted into the middle, comes out clean.

8.  Remove from the tin onto a baking tray and leave somewhere away from overkeen family members, to cool.

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Tonight's dinner : BBQ Sausages, cornbread and salad

I haven't made cornbread for ages - but suddenly had a mad fancy for it.  Hence when The Vegibox delivered a couple of lovely chunky cobs of corn, it seemed like the perfect time.

Along with the corn, this week, they also delivered a bag of delicious salad leaves and some deep scarlet salad tomatoes.

Well, the menu just wrote itself after that.  Lovely chunky pork sausages coated in our favourite Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ sauce.  Happy days!

So, the corn went into the cornbread which son & heir loved.  The salad leaves and tomato went into a little side salad (and really were a cut above anything you'll ever get from a supermarket) - and the gorgeous sausages were basted regularly with the BBQ sauce .. a match made in heaven.

Barbecue Pork Loin Steaks with Apple, Walnut & Cress Wedge Salad and Cornbread

What a feast this was!

We put this meal together some time ago now, before the weather had turned from being monsoon-like into barbecue weather (albeit briefly) and so the pork steaks were cooked in the oven.

The two that are photographed here are the two from the Westin Gourmet pack (I think there's just the mince to blog about now, just in case you're getting fed up of hearing about Westin Gourmet!).  I was - in the same way as the French chicken - surprised and disappointed to discover that the pork steaks originated in Denmark.  Now we all know that Denmark are famous for their pork and bacon exports - but surely with all the great pork producers here in the U.K. Westin Gourmet could have come up with some British pork?

That aside, the pork steaks were undeniably tender and sweet tasting.  I had bought two pork chops for son & heir and myself to have and I can definitely confirm that the two Loin Steaks were by far the more tender.  Hubby gave me a taster, you see!

For all that, though, I can't help but say that I was happier with my locally produced pork chop, then ever I would have been with the steaks.  I'd take locally produced and more robust over imported and tender any day.  Quite apart from the miles it has travelled, there's always a question in my mind as to how the product got to be that tender.  Had it gone through some procedure(s) that made it so?  There's nothing on the packaging to say the meat has received any such attention and I wouldn't expect there to be.  It just leaves a question mark in my mind.

Anyway, getting back to the recipe side of things, it was another excuse to break out the excellent Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ sauce and I slathered the steaks in it before putting them into a hot oven for 25 minutes or so (slightly longer for the chops, as they were bigger).

I served the pork with a wedge salad of Iceberg lettuce covered with shredded apple, crushed walnuts and cress - finishing it all off with the excellent Mary Berry & Daughter's Caesar Salad Dressing.  Delicious!  The walnuts and apple were scrummy with the cheesy salad dressing and it was lovely to have the crunch and freshness of the Iceberg lettuce.

I had been at something of a loss to think of what sort of carbohydrate to put with this meal.  We'd had a number of potato dishes recently and hubby isn't a great fan of potatoes at the best of times.  Pasta wouldn't do and all the grains such as quinoa and wheat weren't universally liked.  I suddenly remembered that I'd found a bag of cornmeal in the supermarket and bought it with cornbread in mind.  Perfect!   It had been absolutely years since we'd had any cornbread, so that would do the job.

I'd picked up a little jar of Chipotle chilli paste in the "marked down" section of the supermarket, so decided to use some of that along with some cheddar cheese in the cornbread, just to gee it up a little.

Gosh, but I'd forgotten how much I love cornbread.  I remember when I made my first batch and we were so surprised at how "cakey" the texture was.  Like most Brits, I'd been expecting something more "bready" and wasn't sure about this fairy cake texture at all.  That was until I bit into it and got a mouthful of the unique flavour that cornbread has.  That was it, then.  I was a confirmed cornbread fan from thereon in.

With the chipotle past and cheese included, the cornbread bakes up a little heavier than normal, but still with the deliciously corny flavour that all cornbreads have.  The chipotle paste adds a certain warmth and smoky flavour, with the cheesy depth that a good strong cheddar will add.  Gorgeous!

I've included the recipe I used for the cornbread below, just in case you want to try it.  Don't worry about adding flavours (such as the chilli paste or cheese) to it if it's your first go - make it plain (just leave them out) and sample it in its pure form to begin with.  Then you can decide whether you want to jazz it up for your next go.  I'm sure there will be a next go!

CHILLI AND CHEESE CORNBREAD  (makes 9-10 portions)

Ingredients :

190g plain flour
115g corn meal
half a tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
40g sugar
240ml buttermilk (or plain yoghurt)
1 large egg
55g butter, melted
3 tsp chipotle chilli paste
2 big handfuls of grated strong cheddar.

Method :

1.  Preheat the oven to 200degC/400degF/Gas 6.

2.  Grease a 9in baking pan with melted butter - or alternatively line with baking parchment, then grease with melted butter (helps with turning the loaf out).

3.  In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients, including the cheese if you're using it.

4.  In a small bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients, including the chipotle paste if you're using it.

5.  Add the contents of the small bowl to the large one and mix together quickly but thoroughly.

6.  Pour into the prepared pan and level the surface.  Then bake for approximately 20 minutes (check it at 20 mins, it should be risen and brown on the surface, springy to the touch and a cocktail stick inserted into the middle should come out clean).

7.  Once baked, allow to cool slightly before turning out onto a wire rack to cool further.

8.  Is delicious served warm from the oven, but can be kept for a day or so (if you've any left, which is unlikely!).

Printable version
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Chilli, Bacon & Sweetcorn Cornbread

As detailed in my earlier blog, hubby set to on Wednesday and made us a beautiful batch of Cornbread to accompany the Chilli he'd made earlier in the day.  I used to make Cornbread regularly at the weekend and we'd just munch on some when the mood took us.  A lack of the right kind of Polenta (or maize flour) stopped those sorts of shenanigans (which is probably just as well, consider the calories involved) and we sort of forgot about it for ages - literally, years.

His sudden bright idea about making it again was a stroke of brilliance, as we knew it would go beautifully with the chilli - which indeed it did.  Instead of a plain Cornbread, he made one with red chilli, bacon and sweetcorn.  For me, the bacon flavour seemed to disappear, with the chilli standing up bravely against those in the meat part of the dish and the sweetcorn providing a lovely sweet, crunchy counterpoint.  As always, the best part of the Cornbread is the corners with their gorgeously crunchy stickiness, which makes me wonder about producing it in Muffin tins in future, so as to maximise the "corner effect".  Mind you, with the melted butter glistening on the top surface, I'm thinking that this is one that doesn't bear repeating too often!

Tuesday again and the new week's menu is up!

Oh, I had such a job organising this week's menu list!  I had two dishes that I really wanted to do, but after that .. nothing.

In a "usual" week, I cook on a Tues/Fri/Sat/Sun and hubby cooks on a Wed/Thurs/Mon.

This routine has come about because I ordinarily work on the days when hubby cooks - he's good enough to relieve me of the task of setting to after what can, some days, be a somewhat brain boggling day (well, 4 hours) at work.  For those of you reading this who are thinking "four hours?  She's got it made!", can I just say that I've done my time of working from 8.30am through to 8.30pm and it darned near killed me at the time and having very nearly been given my honorary harp and cloud again, some two years ago, four hours three days a week is plenty for me thankyou.

Anyway, I digress.

So there I was with five day left to fill, two of which were "my" days.  I immediately consulted my "Recipes I haven't tried yet, but want to" folder and found one candidate.  That left my "Tried and Tested Recipes" folder, where I found another admirable candidate.  Next stop was hubby, to see what he fancied cooking.  Unfortunately, he had even less idea than I did (which is odd, because normally we've each got at least two recipes hovering on the background).  One day was easily filled owing to our local Supermarket having meatballs on special offer.  The next was a stroke of brilliance on hubby's part.  Having suggested the age-old Chilli Con Carne (*groan*), he had the bright idea of making some Cornbread to go along with it instead of the rice.  What a cracking idea!  I used to make Cornbread a few years ago and I loved it, especially with Chilli.  So that was a definite.  That just left one day to fill.  We pondered on what we'd got lurking in the cupboards, what was on special offer at the supermarket - trying desperately to find something other than the ubiquitous Spaghetti Bolognese, which is our usual fallback position.  After much deliberation as to the relative merits of home-made -v- shop bought, (price -v- quality, the usual story), we opted for the price argument and decided to have shop bought Cornish Pasties.  Hey ho!

So, here's what we're having this week :

Tues : (today) Smoked Haddock Chowder.  This is just a bowl full of gorgeousness, which I'll blog about during the week.

Wed : Cornish Pasties, potato waffles and beans.  Ah well, at least hubby and son like them!

Thurs : Chilli and Cornbread.  Yay!

Fri : Prawn & Peanut noodles.  I've a few reservations over this one, but I've put my trust in BBC Good Food and hopefully it'll be lovely.  If nothing else, it'll soothe my desire for a noodle stir fry!

Sat : Honey & Lemon Chicken, carrots, peas & broccoli.  Oooh, now this is a really delicious meal, which uses two lemons together with chicken portions and potatoes.  Everything comes out all caramelised and sticky.  Makes my mouth water just thinking about it!

Sun : Pot Roast Chicken, roast potatoes & parsnips, carrots and peas.  I've never done a pot roast chicken, so now's my chance!

Mon : Meatballs and Spirali Pasta.  It's a meatball, tomato and cheesefest.  Who wouldn't like it?