Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Cornbread as a side dish

The hardest part of a gluten free diet is having enough interesting carbs in your meal. A GF diet pretty much ruins pasta (GF pasta is expensive and not very tasty) and reduces bread carbs - stuffings and the like. A lot of our meals center around rice or potatoes and even though we love them they get tiresome. I discovered a cornbread recipe in a Civil War cookbook that doesn't have flour in it. It's a great cornbread - cold or hot.
The recipe as written:
1 TB butter for greasing pan
2 cups corn meal
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 eggs
2 cups milk
1/4 cup oil

Grease 9x9" pan. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Combine flour and baking powder. Add eggs and mix together. Add milk and oil and mix until combined. Pour into pan. Bake 20-25 minutes.

This is easy to make dairy free by using Nucoa and soy milk. What I do is use Nucoa for the oil - I put a little more than half a stick in the pan and melt it in the oven as it preheats. When it is melted I pour most of it into the batter in place of the oil. I am sure that I leave more than a tablespoon in the pan which creates a buttery salty crust on the cornbread.

Last night we used the cornbread as a base for our meal. I fried ground pork and onions in a deep skillet. Added canned tomatoes (I used ones I canned but you can use any kind that you like). I seasoned it with mexican pepper and we served it over the cornbread. The tomatoes were very wet so the sauce soaked into the cornbread. I also ate some bread with Nucoa and jam. The bread is very firm so it would make a great stuffing and it's a quick recipe so you can use it any time.
It did take a little longer than 25 minutes to cook. I am not sure why but remember that the times are estimates so always start with the least amount of time and check it on a regular basis after.