Dinner and Drinks: Cornbread

All southerners eat cornbread. It's codified in all southern state laws along with owning guns and listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd. Cornbread is great because it goes with so many things and is so easy to make.

That said, there are a millions different ways to make cornbread, and aficionados generally fall into two camps: dry or sweet. Let the proclamation ring forth this day that I am firmly in the dry camp. Cornbread should be dry and crumbly and have a texture reminicent of... well that's the thing. If you make it right, the texture is unlike anything else. If you want it sweet and cake-like, stop reading.

Cornbread

1 1/2 cups yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
2 tbsp canola oil
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
margarine

Preheat the oven to 450°.

Grease a 10" baking pan with margarine. Mix the remaining ingredients in a bowl and whisk vigorously for thirty seconds. Pour the mixture into the pan. Bake in the oven until cooked all the way through (I use the old toothpick method), about 30-35 minutes.

As for cocktails, I made this as a side for my jambalaya (yeah, I eat a lot of that). That means a bottle (or three) of you favorite beer. You may remember that I like my jamabalaya hot.