It Just Had to be Cornbread

Sometimes, if you are from the South, nothing will do but cornbread. We in rural Southwest Alabama are the quintessential southern eaters. All my childhood growing up, we had it every day for dinner. Dinner was in the middle of the day. We had fresh vegetables, maybe a meat dish unless the vegetables were at their height of freshness and flavor and needed to be the centerpiece of the meal, and always, sweet tea. No meal was complete without the cornbread. Vegetables without cornbread were just not done.

I was a picky eater as a child. My mother as all southern mamas, was a food pusher. You had to eat.  I was thin little thing as were my brother and sister. None of us are now as a result of Mama’s food pushing and our subsequent love of food that developed through her persistence. My downfall was peas and cornbread with lots of pot liquor. Until they became a summer diet staple, I didn’t really savor food. I liked it, but didn’t live to eat. It was the potlikker (in southern vernacular) that did it.

For those of you not versed in the preparation of peas and beans southern style, I will explain the process. A piece or two of bacon or Conecuh sausage if you are lucky enough to live where you can get it, is put into the pot where it gets brown and leaves drippings. Water is added to the drippings to create a broth. The peas or beans are then added along with a pinch of sugar to bring out the flavor. Be careful not to put in too much water to dilute the broth. Note: when I refer to peas, I am speaking of the southern kind, not the English kind. There are tons of varieties from pink eyed purple hulls to red ripper to my personal favorite, white crowder pea. Frozen peas are equally delicious to the fresh, though there is something mystical about locally grown fresh peas or beans. Butterbeans are either the homegrown kind picked young, which have a nutty sweet flavor or if you MUST serve frozen, use butter peas, the fat little kind. The peas should just be covered in liquid. Do Not salt the broth until the peas are just tender. If you do, they will be hard and take a lot longer to cook. When the peas are almost done, whole pods of okra can be laid on top until they are tender. At this point, our family removes the okra and serves it on the side. I used to wonder why when other people mushed the okra up in the peas. I found out later that my aunt Mary Jim would not eat okra, so my grandmother both flavored the peas and fooled her by serving it on the side. The pot liquor is a byproduct of the process.
The way I learned to love pot liquor was by crumbling cornbread on a plate, then dousing it with pot liquor and peas. It was delicious. It is even more enhanced by slices of fresh tomato. The corn bread and peas have a nice texture, with the liquor providing the savory compliment of moisture. My daddy swore I made humming sounds, a sort of uuuhhmmm when I ate it.

There is no way to duplicate the flavor of this mixed up dish without the cornbread, and cornbread for this dish needs to be made in a skillet. The crust is good for just out of hand eating, but it’s the dense, firm interior of the cornbread that is needed to uphold the pot liquor. There is a special small skillet in all traditional southern kitchens that exists to hold a pone of cornbread. It is just the right size for a family meal. It is always served warm cut in triangles. It is also good served with gravy of any kind, soups and chili. It is the thing that makes the dish substantial enough to be a meal. There is no substitute for it. When I think of food of my youth, I always see cornbread right there.

Historically, cornbread was what we had. It is truly an American thing, but after the Civil War when food was scarce, it was the main thing. When there was nothing else, there was cornbread. It became wired into southern genetic makeup to represent security – home, family, food. John T Edge has called us in the south “the Cornbread Nation”. He was so right.

In my childhood, we ate our big meal in the middle of the day. If there were leftovers, we might have them for supper, but frequently, supper was a lighter meal. I can remember my grandmother electing to have cornbread crumbled into buttermilk for her supper many a night. In the winter, she’d pull up in front of the gas heater and eat. I tasted it, but didn’t develop the taste for it that she had.  I wanted my cornbread warm doused in pot liquor and studded with peas. Either way, we agreed on one thing. Nothing would do, but cornbread!