A Special Southwestern Treat: Pumpkin Corn Bread From an Out-of-Print Book

Now Out of Print

You could call Southwestern dishes sensuous because they are so often full of warm spicy flavor. Southwestern recipes seem influenced mainly by Spanish American and Native American cuisines. But the menu may well include Anglo American (chuck wagon) and African American (Southern) fare and – judging by entries in the Arizona Republic recipe contests – Asian American and even Pacific Islander influences.

   The special recipe presented here is from Savory Southwest, a grand collection of prize-winning regional recipes from the Republic contests. The book is unfortunately out of print. A few copies were spotted on Amazon.

 
Even though the book is out of print, I thought I should try to find the copyright holder for permission to use the Pumpkin recipe that caught my eye. It was a bit of a chore as the original publisher had sold the business. The new owner, Bowman & Littlefield, hasn’t reprinted the book. But Patricia Zline in that company’s permissions department very kindly gave the go-ahead.

   So, from the Savory Southwest cookbook, a collection of winning recipes compiled by former food editor Judy Hille Walker, we have the Pumpkin Corn Bread recipe of Rebecca Keck.

   The dish is described as “a wonderful combination of flavors” that won the bread category prize in 1986. Keck said she learned the recipe while working at a world famous Arizona tourist destination -- the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

Ingredients:

One and one quarter cup whole wheat blend flour

One tablespoon baking powder

One-half teaspoon salt

One-half teaspoon grated nutmeg

One-quarter teaspoon ground mace

Three-quarters cup yellow cornmeal

Two-thirds cup light brown sugar

Two tablespoons honey

One-quarter cup melted butter

Two eggs lightly beaten

Three-quarters cup pumpkin puree

Two-thirds cup buttermilk *see below

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and mace. Stir in cornmeal. Combine brown sugar, honey and butter in a bowl and mix well. Add eggs, pumpkin and buttermilk. Stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ones, stirring only long enough to mix well. Place the mixture in a greased 8-inch square baking pan and bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until firm. Serve warm. Makes 6 to 10 servings.

   Regarding buttermilk, it is likely available at your grocery store but substitutes are often recommended, for instance milk with a splash of lemon juice or vinegar added. Stella Parks of Serious Eats warns against substitution. Buttermilk provides consistency to the batter, Parks says, and it is important to the rise and to hydration. And there is the matter of flavor. Buttermilk, says Parks, adds a “complex tang” to the taste of the dish. If you are concerned about leftover buttermilk, it keeps well (the flavor improving long past the use-by date, she claims) and can be frozen in heavy-duty zip-top bags.

   I won’t try to include a complete index to Savory Southwest but I will say that of the many regional cookbooks I’ve collected it is a favorite. Just a sampling of what is offered:

Caliente Cheese Fritters, Mexican Egg Rolls with Fresh Salsa, Honeydew Lemonade, Caldo Xochitl (Pretty Soup), Peanut Butter Bread, Hopi Corn Stew, Eric’s Lucky Black-Eyed Peas, Blue Corn Tamale Pie with Butterfly Guaymas (shrimp) and Goat Cheese, Peruvian Pot Roast, Tarte Au Citron, Margarita Pie, Honey-Yogurt Cheesecake…

   

I am partial to pumpkin. Scroll on down in the blog and you will find my investigation of a problem that worried me for some time, that is, what becomes of all those heaps of leftover pumpkins after Halloween?