Seaneen's Sunnyside Kitchen

Like everyone else I’m trying to limit how much I go out at the minute. Also because some people are being eejits and stripping supermarket shelves, I’m trying to work with ingredients I already have at home.

While having a look around the cupboard I found some polenta. I bought it to try a recipe for the Italian supper club and was not really a fan of how the Italian’s use it. However, it works well in the Soul Food staple of corn bread. The American version is too sweet for my taste, so I reduced the amount of sugar.

The recipe also calls for butter milk, which I didn’t have. No problem, just add a good squeeze of lemon juice to ordinary milk for the same effect (the acid in the butter milk/lemon juice helps the chemical reaction that makes the bread rise)

I serve this with chilli, but it’s also good served alongside soups. An American friend of mine also uses left over corn bread, crumbled up over casseroles to make a crunchy topping when baked in the oven. This also freezes really well.

• 

115 Grams Cornmeal/fine polenta

150 Grams Plain flour

1 Tsp Sugar

1 Tsp Salt

1.5 Tsp Baking powder

0.5 Tsp Bicarbonate of Soda

2 Eggs

350 ml Butter milk (or semi skimmed milk, with a good squeeze of lemon)

50 Grams Butter

1 Onion (finely sliced)

Extra butter to grease the baking tin

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 210 degrees, grease a round 23cm cake tin
2. Melt the butter in a frying pan, and fry the onion until translucent, and allow to cool
3. Add all the dry ingredients to a bowl
4. In a separate bowl combine the the eggs, butter milk, and fried onions (including the butter the cooked in)
5. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir well until any large lumps are gone. It’s quite a wet mixture so don’t panic
6. Pour the mix into your greased baking tin, and bake for 25-30 minutes. Check with a skewer or toothpick and when it comes out clean, remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes