Vic Socotra

23 November 2009

Cornbread Stuffing

Well, can’t ignore it any longer. The roads out of town are clogged already with people trying to get the jump on others to head toward groaning tables tomorrow. I will have to deal with the stuffing issue today or it is not going to get done.

The little village of Rapid Ann Station would have been a good place to get decent ground corn-meal as one of the key fixings. The farms there about, on the Culpeper and Orange sides of the river produce a bounty of corn from the rich Virginia soil, something I would not have known if that damn Ford Explorer had not been riding the bumper of the Bluesmobile on the old Rapidan Road that parallels the rail lines of the O&A south from the farm to the river.

The proximity of the aggressive Ford to mine made it difficult to concentrate on the countryside, and I was driving this way to attempt to understand the intricate relationship of the river and the rail line, which drives to a junction between the O&A and the Virginia Central railways at Gordonsville.

I did not intend to go all the way down there, and only had a vague understanding of the nature of the Rapidan, and what a barrier to men and horses it had been, back in the day.

I’ll take you down there, if we ever get the chance, since that is as far south as the irish side of the family got before heading west with the railroads to Ohio and Tennessee before the War started. The Exchange Hotel down there is supposed to be a grand sight, what with the high ceiling in the parlor and the grand veranda to attract passengers from the VCR and the O&A. The Exchange Hotel was transformed into the Gordonsville Receiving Hospital, which served the post-combat needs of 70,000 wounded soldiers from both sides.

After the war ended, the hospital served as a Freedman’s Bureau for the former slaves in the area. You cannot forget that part of the way, even if the Virginia Historical Signage doesn’t mention it much.

There is a nice highway bridge at little Rapidan village that separates two fine churches, Emmanuel and Waddell’s, which constitute the bulk of what is left of a once-optimistic town before the Yankees burned it a few times headed for the grand objective of Gordonsvile to the south. Seizing that rail junction would enable the Federals to cut off supply of corn meal and other necessities to Richmond from the farms of the Shenandoah Valley to the northwest, and consequently, the little ford at Rapidan village attracted violence like flies to sugar.

Or whatever.

The town fathers and mothers have restored the depot that no longer is on the modern rail lines, and on a bit of track have parked an old caboose with much of the planking rotted away to show you the glory that was.

Anyway, there is a pretty grand mill with tall concrete storage silos on the Orange County side of the river that is shuttered now, and I drove through it after turning off the paved road to get rid of the aggressive Explorer. It has been shut down a long time. The old road leads off to cross the tracks, and then weaves as a one-lane gravel road through farms and fields for a dozen miles on the way to the Orange County Courthouse.

The Bluesmobile is a splendid way to cross the fields, and the road is exactly as it might have been seventy or eighty years ago, at the dawn of the motor age, and if you squinted hard, you can imagine what it might have looked like walking or riding along with a certain sense of urgency and a heavy pack on your back, sweat running down and dog-ass tired.

Anyway, corn from these fields would have been perfect for the cornbread stuffing.
One of my pals has a mother who came from North Carolina, and she said:

“What we used to get was water-ground white Cornmeal. People said that what was important, really, was that it was White Corn and that that it was fresh, with nice chips of meal amongst the powder.”

There was not much chance to getting that in modern Rapidan, since everything is trucked in, even if the raw power of the river is why the village was originally founded at the shallow ford.

Actually, there is not even much chance of actually getting to the full recipe for the stuffing this morning, despite my best intentions. But here is a go on the cornbread part, just in case you have not locked yourself in. Once you have the cornbread, there is about a gazzillion things you can do, so some ground hot North Carolina sausage, fresh sage and celery might be things you could remember to get at the store, but that is up to you.

Martha Rose Shulman got me thinking about it last week. Her version was inspirational when I saw it in the Times last week, but I had to adapt and mold to my own purposes. Like Martha, I dislike sweet cornbread, which is untrue to the times and to the taste.

Rapidan Cornbread

1 cup yellow cornmeal, preferably local organic water-ground
1/2 cup whole wheat flour (or general purpose, if that is what you have)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 brown eggs
1 cup buttermilk or plain low-fat yogurt
1/2 cup whole milk
1 tablespoon mild mesquite honey
small can of green diced chilis

2 to 3 tablespoons unsalted butter (to taste)

1. Turn on the oven and get it scorching hot- 375-400 degrees. Get out that cast iron skillet you keep around for general purpose cooking. I keep mine in the oven for seasoning the iron. You should have a large and a medium one, so use the smaller of the two. One of those Pyrex dishes would work, too, unless it is one of the new Chinese ones that have flooded the market since they bought the brand name and which have a tendency to explode.

2. Place the cornmeal in a bowl, and sift in the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Stir the mixture with a spoon to mix it up. Drain the green chilis well and sort them in. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, buttermilk (or yogurt), milk and honey. Whisk the cornmeal mixture into the liquid mixture. Do not overwork the batter.

3. Remove the pan from the oven, and add the butter to it so it melts but does not darken. Make sure to coat the sides as you take the rest and fold it into the batter.

4. Speed is of the essence. Shovel the batter back into the skillet and throw it in the oven and bake until golden brown, a half hour or more, or until your little finger comes out clean from the middle.

Yield: Makes 8 to 10 servings. This is easily doubled for a larger quantity of stuffing, or enough for an 18 pound turkey. That will feed five Yankees or a squad of Rebels who are used to going with less.

You can make the cornbread several days ahead, but you are running out of time already, so, get hot.

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