My friend Beth has leant me (almost on permanent loan) two very wonderful cookbooks by Laurel Robertson: Laurel's Kitchen and Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. Maybe on another post I can tell why I like them so much (even though we aren't vegetarians) and why I have been so reluctant to return them (I've recently decided I just have to get copies for myself), but for now I'm going to post Laurel's recipe for Tennessee Corn Pone since Beth posted about it here but didn't have her book to type up the recipe!
Tennessee Corn Pone
A homesick friend from Knoxville described a dish his grandma used to make. After several false starts, we came up with this - a dead ringer, he says, and certainly one of his favorites. (This is Amber talking, not Laurel -- I'll have to tell you where the phrase dead ringer comes from in another post, but this is one of the reasons I like Laurel, people just came into her kitchen and she cooked for them. She got to know them through food.)
4 cups very juicy cooked and seasoned beans (especially pinto or kidney)
2 cups cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 quart of buttermilk
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1/4 margarine
Heat beans until quite hot and pour into a lightly greased 9" x 13" baking dish. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Mix the cornmeal, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Melt the margarine and combine with buttermilk and eggs. Stir the wet and dry ingredients together until smooth and pour them over the hot beans. Bake on the top rack of your oven until bread is a rich golden color and the sides of the corn bread pull away from the sides of the pan. This takes about 30 minutes. Serves 10 to 12.
Laurel says this about beans:
Even if you weren't interested in cooking them, you'd probably like to have several jars of beans around for decorative value alone. Their rich, earthen colors are a feast for the eye. Our Red Bean Mix is designed to maximize nutritional value, but its appearance would delight the most exacting artist. It may be because during the Depression people could afford nothing else, but a good many people have a mental block against beans. We did at first, but it quickly gave way with a little experimentation.
She goes on to talk about how to cook them and even about flatulence when we aren't used to eating them. In one place of Laurel's kitchen she even talks about eating beans for breakfast!