Working on a Cinco de Mayo menu - so much to choose from. Here's a new one that looks good.

[elaine]

From Paul MaCartney's meatless monday cookbook as posted in Readers Digest.

Mexican Cornbread

Serves 4–6

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease an 8-inch round baking dish and dust with a little flour. Seed 1 green chile and 1 red chile and chop finely. Trim and slice 6 scallions. Heat a little olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat, add the scallions and chiles, and cook for a couple of minutes until soft but not colored.

Remove from the heat, tip into a bowl, and add a 14-ounce can drained corn and 2 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro. Beat 2 large organic eggs together with 1/2 cup of sour cream and add to the corn mixture. Sift a heaping cup polenta and 21/2 teaspoons baking powder into the bowl, add 11/2 cups grated Cheddar, and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Pour into the prepared pan, spread level, and scatter with another 1/2 cup grated Cheddar. Bake on the middle shelf of the preheated oven for 35–40 minutes or until golden and well risen, and a skewer inserted into the middle of the cornbread comes out clean.

 

[marilynfl]

Sounds good, but I'm confused on the "sift a heaping cup of polenta" step

Reading through I would have thought they meant "Masa harina" which is a type of corn flour.

Polenta is much coarser. (Hold on a minute. I think I know where they're going...let me check...okay, I'm back.) I ALWAYS buy the coarse grind for grits/polenta and that takes at least a 3:1 ratio of liquid to polenta to cook. This must be the fine grind which seems to be more flour-y.

Guess the eggs and sour cream are enough liquid for 1 cup of corn flour.

 

[elaine]

Corn meal is just like polenta or maybe it is polenta and it is fairly fine.

I always use it in cornbread for cornbread stuffing.

 

[mistral]

--And our local good Italian Deli has polenta in different "grit" sizes, from quite coarse. . .

to very fine.

Corn meal mush to a southerner is just very fine polenta to an Italian, methinks.

 

[marianne]

I made this yesterday, and it was awful! I used 1 1/4 cups of plain yellow cornmeal. It was coarse

grainy, dry, and the cilantro (which I normally like) ruined it. Anyone else have any luck with it? Southern cornbread is usually made with a combo of cornmeal and white flour, to give a lighter texture.