[Sca-cooks] Re: Sca-cooks digest - Perioidish Bread - no gluten - OOP

[Devra at aol.com]

This is only vaguely period--well, it looks and smells like gingerbread of
the modern variety, tastes good, and has no wheat, rice, rye, or barley in
it.

    Espetagna Corn Bread
- stolen from Crazy About Corn, by Betty Fussell, HarperPerennial

1-2 cooked sweet potatoes (to make 2 C chunks--can use canned)
4 Tbs butter, melted
1 egg, beaten
1/2 C milk
3 Tbs brown sugar
1 1/2 C freshly ground cornmeal, medium grind
1 Tbs baking powder
1 Tbs ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1) Preheat oven to 350 degress F.
2)  Toast the cornmeal in shallow baking pan for about 10 minutes in the
preheated oven, stirring occasionally.  Remove and set aside.
3) Raise oven to 400.  Grease well a heavy cast-iron skillet with butter or
shortening and heat it in the oven about 5 minutes before you add the batter.
4) Peel the cooked sweet potatoes, cut then in chunks, and put them in a food
processor with the butter, egg, and milk.  Puree until smooth.
5) Stir together the dry ingredients and add them into the sweet potatoe
mixture,  Pulse until smooth.
6) Scoop the mixture into the heated skillet, cover with a lid (or foil), and
bake for 15 minutes.  Remove the lid and cook until the top is slightly
browned, 10 to 15 minutes more.

According to author's note, this is derived from  Sarah Rutledge's 1847 The
Carolina Housewife, which was reprinted in Celestine Eustis' Fifty Valuable
and Delicious Recipes Made with Corn Meal for 50 Cents (1917).  The original
recipe calls for cooking the bread in a covered skillet placed on hot coals.

    It's tasty.
Devra the Baker



Devra Langsam
www.poisonpenpress.com
devra at aol.com