Southern Cornbread

May. The quarantine continues. The world outside is frightened and strange, and the world inside is Marvin and me and the kitchen and the disease that continues its work regardless of the virus, because the virus may have shut down the world but it has not shut down the Alzheimer's, which observes no lockdowns, respects no social distancing, and proceeds at its own pace, which is relentless.

I am teaching remotely and hating every minute of it. I miss the classroom the way an amputee misses a limb — phantom sensations, the feeling of a room full of students even when the room is empty, the ghost of a bell that doesn't ring. I teach through the laptop screen and my juniors stare back at me with the glazed expressions of people who are simultaneously in my class and on their phones and possibly asleep, and I cannot tell which because the screen is small and the distance is vast and the energy that makes a classroom alive — the electricity of thirty humans in one room, breathing the same air, arguing about the same book — is absent. I am teaching to a grid of faces. It is like teaching to a wall. A wall with eyes.

I assigned poetry. This is my pandemic strategy: when the novels feel too heavy, when the world is too much for fiction, give them poetry. Short. Sharp. One poem, one truth, one sitting. I gave them Mary Oliver: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" A student named Alex, who has been silent all semester, typed in the chat: "Make my grandmother's cornbread." I stared at the screen. I said, "Alex, that is the best answer I've heard all year." Because it is. Because what you plan to do with your one wild and precious life is: cook. Feed people. Carry forward the recipes that the women before you carried through worse than this. This pandemic is not the worst thing that has happened to the world. The worst things already happened, and the soup survived, and the cornbread survived, and we will survive too.

I made cornbread this week, inspired by Alex. Not Ashkenazi. Not Jewish. Southern, American, the kind of cornbread that belongs to a different tradition than mine but that carries the same message: someone stood in a kitchen and made this because someone else needed to eat. The cornbread was good. Marvin ate two pieces. Alex, wherever you are, your grandmother would be proud.

After Alex typed those words into the chat, I couldn’t stop thinking about cornbread — about the way a recipe can be an answer to a question no one knew how to ask. So I made one that weekend, the kind with a hot skillet and real buttermilk, the kind that comes out with crispy edges and a tender middle, and Marvin and I sat at the table and ate it while the world outside did whatever it was doing. This is that cornbread. It is not complicated. The best answers rarely are.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 8

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/3 cups buttermilk
2 large eggs
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Place a 10-inch cast iron skillet in the oven and preheat to 425°F. Let the skillet heat for at least 10 minutes while you mix the batter.
Mix the dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
Combine the wet ingredients. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter and let it cool slightly. In a separate bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, eggs, and melted butter until smooth.
Make the batter. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Do not overmix — a few lumps are fine.
Heat the skillet. Carefully remove the hot skillet from the oven. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter and swirl until it melts and coats the bottom and sides of the pan.
Pour and bake. Pour the batter into the sizzling skillet. It should hiss when it hits the pan. Return the skillet to the oven and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the top is golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Cool and serve. Let the cornbread rest in the skillet for 5 minutes before slicing into wedges. Serve warm with butter, honey, or nothing at all.

Nutrition (per serving)

Southern Cornbread — For Alex, and for All the Grandmothers Who Kept Cooking