TWD: Corniest Corn Muffins

I took a class devoted to literature of the American South in college. I remember we read many of the gold standards, Faulkner, O'Connor, Harper Lee, and Tennessee Williams. My favorite authors that I read in that class, though, were Walker Percy and Erskine Caldwell. The Moviegoer is definitely on my list of books I'd bring to a desert island, and while Tobacco Road might not make it to the island, I really like that novel. The professor was outstanding, and as far as I can tell, the only glaring oversight was the absence of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. If you haven't read this novel I'd say put it on your reading bucket list. Ignatius Reilly is a memorable character. Dudley and I disagree:  he actually wants to be Ignatius's friend -- I just want to be a fly on the wall. Or maybe I just want to purchase a few Big Chief writing tablets.

Cornbread is not, in any way, shape, or form, exclusive to the American South, but I started thinking about that class and Tobacco Road because I can't think about that novel without thinking about tenant sharecropping and corn. Jeeter Lester, like the majority of tenant sharecroppers of the time, farms corn. Ada, his wife, suffers from pellagra. I'm not going to get into pellagra here, but you know, when you're at the dinner table with a couple of medical types and they try to start lecturing you about corn and pellagra, it's nice to be able to cut them off at the pass. In my family we love to play the "I know more than you do, nah nah nah" game. I like Tobacco Road for all of the various and sundry reasons people enjoy novels, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't totally appreciate it from a trivial knowledge standpoint, too.

Of course, if you ate these corniest corn muffins you wouldn't have to worry about pellagra anyway because they're composed of equal parts flour and corn meal. They're very tasty, and I made them just as the recipe states, corn kernels and all. Honestly, I don't think any cornbread will ever beat the recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice; that is my gold standard cornbread recipe. Yes, I like my cornbread on the sweet side. This recipe is a close second, though, and given that you don't need to start it the night before, I can see this becoming a frequently used recipe, too. I like these with pepper jelly, and a corn muffin was the perfect accompaniment to my spinach salad at lunch today. In Flour Joanne Chang has a recipe for corn muffins with raspberry jam and I was sorely tempted to head in that direction with these muffins. In the end I decided I'd make this recipe as-is and try the Flour recipe some time soon. Thanks, Jill, for the fun pick this week. It's rodeo time in Houston, and Mardi Gras time, too. I know these will be roundly appreciated and enjoyed. If you're interested in the recipe, be sure to check out Jill's blog, My Next Life.