The Cornbread Gospels by Crescent Dragonwagon Read Free Book Online

salt
    1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves, crumbled between the fingertips
    ⅓ cup milk
    2 teaspoons to 1 tablespoon finely chopped pickled jalapeño peppers
    1 egg
    3 tablespoons butter, melted
    ¼ cup corn kernels, cut from 1 ear of fresh corn (see Shuck and Jive, page 49 ); or frozen corn kernels, measured and defrosted; or canned, very well-drained
    1. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Spray an 8-inch square baking pan, preferably glass or glazed ceramic, with oil.
    2. Combine the cornmeal, flour, and sugar in a large bowl, and sift in the baking powder and salt.
    3. Whisk together the thyme, milk, jalapeños, egg, and melted butter in a smaller bowl. Stir into the dry ingredients gently so that the mixture is thoroughly moistened, but don’t overbeat it. Stir in the corn kernels, distributing them evenly throughout the batter.
    4. Transfer the batter into the prepared pan, place it in the oven, and bake until the top is lightly browned and a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the middle, about 20 minutes. Serve hot.

    C ORNBREAD AT K WANZAA
    Invented in 1966, Kwanzaa is an African American holiday held annually for seven days, beginning each December twenty-sixth. It was started by the often-controversial Ron Karenga, a “cultural nationalist” who served as chair of the Department of Black Studies at California State University at Long Beach from 1987 to 2002 and still teaches there. Part of the movement toward reclaiming and celebrating black identity, in turn part of the Civil Rights and freedom movement, Kwanzaa (“first fruits of the harvest” in Swahili) was created at one of the crests of this ongoing movement’s power, vitality, and energy. Though it was Karenga’s conscious ideological attempt to integrate the diversity of African roots with the need for unity and shared identity, in the nearly forty years that Kwanzaa has been in existence, it has taken on a vigorous life of its own, and is now celebrated by more than thirteen million people worldwide.
    Rooted in the first-fruits and harvest festivals that are part of every agrarian culture, and that have been part of African civilization since the days of ancient Egypt and Nubia, Kwanzaa today is family-oriented and often is observed in addition to religious holidays. Like many celebrations that occur around the time of the winter solstice, the year’s shortest day, Kwanzaa punctuates the pending gradual return of daylight with symbolic and literal illumination. (The Ashanti say, beautifully, that solstice is “when the edges of the year meet.”)
    On each of the holiday’s seven days, a family member lights a candle from the kinara, a seven-branched candelabra, and the family talks about one of seven principles of African American unity. The celebration culminates on December thirty-first with the Karamu, a feast. In America,this abundance of good food often includes not only African preparations, but traditional dishes from the Caribbean, South America, North America … wherever enslaved Africans were taken. Many African Americans incorporate Southern dishes into their feasts, because, as Stephen Johnson of Oakland, California, a longtime devotee of the holiday, explained to the Pittsburgh Review-Tribune, “We’re of African descent, but a lot of us don’t cook African food because it hasn’t been passed on to us the way the Southern food has been passed on to us.” Such pass-on dishes include rice and black-eyed peas, collard greens, fried okra, biscuits with coconut and/or sesame seeds, and sweet potato pie. All are popular at Kwanzaa feasts, and they might accompany an African dish like vegetable mafé, a very spicy vegetable stew with a peanut butter and tomato sauce. And of course, cornbread’s appearance is essential.

    ·M·E·N·U·
    A N A BUNDANT K WANZAA K ARAMU
    Salad of Marinated Black-Eyed Peas
    *
    Greens, Old South Style or Greens, New South Style
    *
    Baked Catfish, Fried Chicken, and/or “Chicken-Fried” Tofu
    *
    Vegetable