Cornbread and Roses
Tale of a Summer Salad
It’s summer and the living is anything but easy.
Fires are raging all over California. Political temperatures, already sky high, are shooting into the stratosphere. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be equally out of control, along with the astounding human toll it has taken.
And here I am in my kitchen (again!) contemplating the mundane task of what to make for supper that doesn’t require turning on the oven full blast and adding more dishes to the pile already stacked in the sink.
The answer? Salad, of course.
It’s my go-to hot-weather meal, and not just as a side dish. If you add some protein, your preferred leafy greens, some legumes if you like, cold leftover grains or croutons, plus a dressing, or maybe just a squeeze of lemon juice, you’re all set. The result is as satisfying as mac and cheese, roast chicken or a plate of barbecue-and you didn’t turn your kitchen into a blow torch to accomplish it.
I must admit, sometimes I take shortcuts. Be honest-don’t we all? Still, I’m writing this in the guise of a food blogger and proud “I-make-it-from-scratch” home cook. But it’s just too damn hot, and I’m married to someone who goes into raptures over takeout from Chipotle or El Pollo Loco! So sometimes I buy a salad from Trader Joe’s, augment it with feta, garbanzos, leftover rice or quinoa, and call it dinner.
This week, I made some cornbread-yes, from scratch. It’s probably the easiest quick bread I make, and it makes my husband, Jeff, very happy. I found the recipe on the back of a package of Golden Pheasant Polenta, but any medium or coarse-grain cornmeal will do. (Here’s a link to the recipe here and another link to a gluten-free version here.)
I like to make both in a 10-inch cast-iron skillet that I preheat in the oven, then grease liberally with butter before pouring in the batter. (Yes, it requires using the oven, but you could easily make it early in the day, then reheat later-plus, it is quick bread and requires only about 20 minutes of oven time!)
After we had a couple of slices with lentil soup, I mused about what to do with the leftovers (other than just toasting and eating with melted butter and honey!). I remembered a visit a few years ago to Santa Barbara, when we dined with friends at a restaurant called Tupelo Junction Cafe on the main drag, State Street. Jeff had ordered a salad he couldn’t stop talking about. It included cubes of cornbread, fried chicken and a host of other ingredients I couldn’t remember.
When I looked it up, the Santa Barbara restaurant had closed, but another eatery with the same name turned up about 40 miles south of us in Newport Beach. The menu included the same salad, described on their Instagram account as “Southern Fried Chicken Salad w/Fresh Cornbread, Dried Cranberries, Pumpkin Seeds & Herb Buttermilk Dressing.”
The Tupelo Junction Cafe salad that inspired mine.
I wasn’t in the mood to attempt to deep-fry a chicken on a smoky August afternoon, so we bought two freshly made fried chicken breasts from the local Gelson’s, and I mustered up the remaining ingredients, plus a few others I like-romaine lettuce, with some mixed greens thrown in; toasted pumpkin seeds; a few slices of cornbread, cubed and browned in a toaster oven; a handful of dried cranberries; a scattering of grated cheese; chopped scallions; and some fresh corn, scraped from the cob. I used a lemon vinaigrette dressing, but as the restaurant’s buttermilk version got raves, here’s a recipe you might try for that.
The salad I made was very satisfying-though definitely not for those who are counting calories!
And what about the roses (see headline above)?
In the early ’90s when Jeff covered TV for USA Today, he interviewed the legendary late comedian Redd Foxx, a cantankerous personality best known for starring in the ’70s sitcom, “Sanford and Son.” Foxx complained to Jeff that he hadn’t been appreciated by his previous network boss.
“He said the way [the boss] should show his appreciation was to send him some cornbread and roses,” Jeff recalled. “So I made it known to my boss, in jest, that if she really appreciated me, she could send me cornbread and roses.”
Which she did. And cornbread has held a special place in Jeff’s heart ever since. And roses have a special place in mine.
Thanks for reading this edition of Ruth Talks Food. Comments, likes and shares are always welcome. See you next time.
Originally published at https://ruthtalksfood.substack.com.
