My cooking efforts - carb haters look away!

Last week one of my impulse buys was blue corn flour. I was walking out for lunch with some work colleagues to the Borough Markets and saw a chile (as they spelt it) shop. So I picked up a variety of dried chile I've never tasted and some of this flour to make real corn bread! Which last I've always wanted to do. Apart from Mint Juleps I wasn't sure what else went with corn bread so did a web search for that and came up with an easy recipe for Black Eyed Beans.


The two ingredients, Black Eyed Beans and corn flour, have been sitting in my cupboard all weekend waiting for me to have the time to use them. Last night after getting home from the Cathedral youth group I put my BEBs on to soak overnight. Then after work today I put them on to boil with a few dashes of tabasco, lots of pepper, salt, some mediterranean style herbs, anbd lots of chilli flakes. While they boiled away for a bit I sauteed an onion in some olive oil with garlic then added it to the beans, reducing the lot to a simmer. Let them simmer for about an hour and a half and at the appropriate time began the corn bread. I even used a skillet in the oven! I was that authentic!


Put the frying pan with oil in the pre-heated oven while I mixed together corn flour, milk (couldn't find butter-milk in this place; like last time I tried to find light cream - every deli and supermarket had double cream but light? Impossible!), water, some corn kernels and chile in bowl. Took the skillet from the oven, sprinkled some cornflour in the hot oil and poured in half the batter. Then time for sliced jalapenos and some grated cheese followed by the last of the mix. Back in oven for a bake...longer than I expected because when checking it 15mins later I accidentally turned off the oven...But it still turned out well, though a slightly off-putting hue thanks to the blue corn flour.


Anyway, as a meal, it was really fantastic!! I loved it! And couldn't believe a meal with so few spices could taste so good: though of course I had put a truck load of chile in everything!

(One photo is of my dinner with the salad items I had on hand. A beetroot and two mushrooms. The other is of the rest of the corn bread in the skillet to prove I cooked it the traditional Southern way, even if my recipe was a mish-mash of internet based modernisms. Also I DIDN'T use sugar. My reading had told me that was strictly for Yankees.)