Name: Cornbread Panzanella
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 1 h 25 min
Yield: 4-8 servings
Ingredients: 1 cup cornmeal (NOT cornbread mix); 1/2 cup all-purpose or whole-wheat flour; 1 tablespoon baking powder; 1 teaspoon salt; 1/2 teaspoon baking soda; 6 tablespoons butter-4 of them melted; 1 large egg; 1 1/2 cups buttermilk; 1/2 cup mayonnaise; 1/4 cup sour cream; 1/4 cup buttermilk; 1 green onion, top cut off; 1 clove garlic; 1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley; 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar; 1/2 teaspoon salt; 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce; 1/2 teaspoon paprika; 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional); 2 hearts of romaine, cut into bite-sized pieces; 2 large tomatoes, seeds and core removed, diced; 1 cup corn kernels (about 2 ears fresh corn); 2 green onions, thinly sliced; 4 strips bacon, cooked and chopped; 4 ounces cheddar cheese, cut into 1/4-inch cubes

Cornbread Panzanella with Fresh Corn

August 14, 2015

Cornbread panzanella is a jazzed up version of cornbread salad, an old Southern favorite, that combines the fresh tastes of summer with crispy Southern cornbread.

In case you don’t know, panzanella is bread salad. So I’m just being all fancy when I call this cornbread salad panzanella instead of calling it what it is-cornbread salad. Forgive me for being a fancy-pants, won’t you? Anyway, I love cornbread salad, which is usually a layered affair with cornbread (obvs), tomatoes, corn, onions of some type, often some sort of bean, and a creamy dressing.

Sometimes, though, those traditional cornbread salads end up feeling a little heavy for me. The dressing makes the cornbread a bit mushy and everything starts to seem a little…wet? Is that the word I’m looking for? I think it is. I realize that’s kind of the effect that dressing is supposed to have, but at times it ends up being a bit of a turn-off for me.

Then I read Deb Perelman’s recipe for corn bread salad on Smitten Kitchen (Deb and I could have a serious discussion about whether cornbread is one word or two). Heavy on greenery and with toasted cornbread croutons, Deb’s salad was tossed a little more lightly with dressing and was just a little lighter than the cornbread salads I’d known. I was immediately smitten (see what I did there???).

For my cornbread panzanella, I decided to include a lot of the components of traditional cornbread salad with a bit of a lighter approach…lots of greenery, perfect summer tomatoes, corn, some cheese, thinly sliced green onions, and a light ranch dressing. Oh, and cornbread, of course….unsweetened, of course, because in my opinion cornbread is not Southern if it has sugar in it. Give this cornbread panzanella a try and tell me what you think!

Yield: 4-8 servings

Cornbread Panzanella

20 minPrep Time:

1 hr, 25 Cook Time:

Save Recipe

Print Recipe

My Recipes My Lists My Calendar

Ingredients

For Cornbread

1 cup cornmeal (NOT cornbread mix)
1/2 cup all-purpose or whole-wheat flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
6 tablespoons butter-4 of them melted
1 large egg
1 1/2 cups buttermilk

For quick blender ranch dressing

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 green onion, top cut off
1 clove garlic
1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)

For the salad

2 hearts of romaine, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 large tomatoes, seeds and core removed, diced
1 cup corn kernels (about 2 ears fresh corn)
2 green onions, thinly sliced
4 strips bacon, cooked and chopped
4 ounces cheddar cheese, cut into 1/4-inch cubes

Instructions

Make the cornbread: Place a 10-inch cast iron skillet in the oven and preheat to 450 degrees. In a large bowl, whisk together the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a measuring cup, whisk the egg into the buttermilk. Pour over the cornmeal mixture then add the 4 tablespoons melted butter. Whisk together until no dry bits remain. When the oven has preheated, place the 2 remaining tablespoons of butter into the skillet. When the butter has melted, pour the cornbread batter into the pan. Bake for 25 minutes. Remove from pan and cool briefly.
Reduce the oven temperature to 200 degrees. Cut the cornbread into 1-inch cubes. Spread on a sheet pan. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour to try the cubes.
While the cornbread cubes are baking, make the dressing. Place all ingredients into a blender and blend on high speed until smooth. If you find that the dressing is too thick, you can add more buttermilk, a little at a time. Pour into a jar and store in the refrigerator.
In a very large bowl, combine the cornbread cubes with the remaining salad ingredients. Drizzle with about 1/2 cup of the dressing. Toss to coat completely. You can add more dressing if you'd like.

Notes

Most of the prep for this recipe occurs during the time that the cornbread cubes are drying in the oven, so don't let the long cook time scare you! It's mostly inactive. This recipe can be served as a main dish or as a side dish.

https://chattavore.com/cornbread-panzanella/

Click here to print the recipe for cornbread panzanella!

Coconut and Peach Oatmeal

August 13, 2015

This coconut peach oatmeal is creamy, fresh, delicious, and vegan. It makes me wish peach season lasted all year long…sigh.

Coconut peach oatmeal is what’s up, you guys. I’ve been obsessed with peaches lately…they are so good and I just can’t get enough of them. I love to stop at Bryden’s Market and pick up a cup of peaches (does anyone else think that it’s funny that they call those little baskets “cups”?). It feels like Christmas and I’ll cry when they’re gone. I’m not going to think about that right now, though. Instead, I’m going to think about this vegan coconut peach oatmeal that I made for Peace.Love.Quinoa. Crista writes a great vegan blog!

To get the recipe for coconut peach oatmeal, click here!

Lunch Packing Ideas for Back to School!

August 12, 2015

If you need lunch packing ideas, you’ve come to the right place…I’ve got 15 LISTS of lunch packing ideas from great food blogs!

It’s back to school time here in Tennessee, which means new lunch boxes and trying to find ways to fill them! My struggle to pack my own lunch every day is well documented here, so I thought I’d share a few of my lunch packing ideas as well as lots of ideas from other bloggers! Every.Single.One. of the posts listed here contains not one, not two, but an entire list of lunch packing ideas for you! Happy packing?!
1. A Week Worth of Lunches: Pimento Cheese 5 Ways – Chattavore

2. Real Food School Lunch Gallery – 100 Days of Real Food

3. School Lunch Ideas – Weelicious

4. A Full Year of Lunch Packing Ideas – What Lisa Cooks

5. Lunch Made Easy: 20 Non-Sandwich School Lunch Ideas for Kids! (Gluten Free & Allergy Friendly) – Keeley McGuire

6. 16 Recipes that Pack Well for Lunch – Cookie and Kate

7. Project LunchBox: 30 Days of Healthy Meals (with free PDF!) – Marla Meredith

8. 15 Non-Wimpy Salads to Take for Lunch – The Kitchn

9. 10 Nut-Free School Lunch Ideas – Momables

10. 21 Clean Lunches that Can Be Packed in Under 10 Minutes – Skinny Ms.

11. Simple, Healthy, and Delicious Packed Lunches for Kids – Yumbox Lunch

12. 15 Quick and Easy Lunch Recipes – Damn Delicious

13. Week of Vegetarian Lunch Box Ideas Kids Can Make – Kids Activities Blog

14. Over 50 Healthy Work Lunchbox Ideas – Family Fresh Meals

15. 31 Days of School Lunchbox Ideas – $5 Dinners

Mindy B’s Deli (Downtown Chattanooga)

August 10, 2015

Mindy B’s Deli is a downtown Chattanooga lunch hot spot that serves amazing sandwiches, homemade sides, and great desserts!

One of the downsides of my job is that I don’t get a whole lot of chances to go out to eat (many if not most of my meals are eaten in my car) and definitely not at any place that doesn’t have on-site parking. And with my job, I get a lot of days off, but certain excursions take some forethought and planning. Like visiting Mindy B’s Deli.

Mindy B’s, located in the Volunteer State Building on the corner of Georgia Avenue and MLK, is open from 10-3, Monday-Friday. There’s parking in Patten Parkway, but I never assume that in a spot with limited parking that a spot is going to be easy to come by. Plus, we like to park and walk. On one of my last days off (as you’re reading this, I went back to work last Thursday) we headed downtown and parked in one of the lots near Unum and walked over. It’s always nice when a lunch excursion helps me accumulate some steps on my Fitbit!

We got to Mindy B’s around 12:45 or 1, thinking that we would hit the end of the lunch crowd. As it turns out, there were several occupied tables, but there was only one lady in line ahead of us, but after we sat down, a pretty steady stream of people came in, resulting in a line that took a while to dissipate. We sat down and took in the atmosphere. There were about nine or ten tables (give or take) inside with a couple of bistro tables outside. The walls were painted in a bright green with tin panels along the bottom half. You walk up and grab a laminated menu from a basket on the counter to decide on your order; the front of the counter is painted with chalkboard paint and the daily special and desserts are listed on the chalkboard. A refrigerated deli case contained lots of salads, like potato salad, egg salad, broccoli salad, herbed tuna salad, and tarragon chicken salad.

Mindy B’s holds a contest every year where customers can submit a sandwich idea. Honestly, I can’t remember how the winners are chosen, but I assume that customers vote (someone tell me please!). The winning sandwich makes it onto the menu. I decided to order the 2012 winner: Chris’s Rockefeller. The Rockefeller was made on sourdough toast with corned beef, pastrami, roast beef, cheddar, pepper Jack, lettuce, and “rock” sauce. While the Thanksgiving (turkey, cream cheese, and cranberry sauce), the Big Cheese (pimento cheese on pumpernickel), and the Coop (tarragon chicken salad with lettuce, tomato, and onion on sourdough) all sounded tempting, I have a hard time passing up anything that contains corned beef or pastrami, so both? Count me in! The Rockefeller was delicious, with waaaaaaayyyyyy more meat on it that I should eat in a day (but: cured beef!). The cheese was not melted but the heat from the bread had softened it up a little bit. There wasn’t a cumbersome amount of lettuce on it, and the Rock sauce was a mayo-based sauce that was just a little sweet and a little spicy. On the side, I had the broccoli salad, which had everything that broccoli salad should have: broccoli (of course!), dried cranberries, red onions (which I could do without, but they were in fairly large pieces so I ate around them), and bacon, plus walnuts, lightly dressed with a mayo-based dressing.

Philip ordered the Pub, aka the Reuben, because he pretty much has a rule that he has to order the Reuben wherever he goes. I’m not going to lie, he still says that the Vine Street Market Reuben is the best he’s had, but he thought that this was a very good Reuben. It was a good-sized but not overwhelmingly large Reuben with a good balance between the meat, cheese, sauerkraut, and sauce. He really liked that they had actually put a thin slice of meat between the sauerkraut and the bread to keep the sauerkraut from making the bread soggy. He had a bag of cheddar jalapeño chips with his sandwich.

Mindy B’s has a build-your-own sandwich option, so you can have whatever you want. There are also several sandwiches that are part of a pick-two combo. Salads are also available-a “plain ol'” salad or a build-your-own, where you add a main (meat or pimento cheese), a cheese, vegetables, and a dressing to a bed of greens served with house crostini. You can also build a three-salad plate with salads from the deli case. Mindy B’s also serves a good selection of desserts, including brownies, cookies, and pies, which all looked amazing, but we have been on kind of a junk food bender the last few days and we needed to slow down so we abstained.

Mindy B’s is a friendly atmosphere with very nice people serving up quality deli food. It’s obvious that the downtown workday lunch crowd loves them! If you’re downtown and want a great salad or sandwich, Mindy B’s Deli is a great option! By the way, our total for our sandwiches, my broccoli salad ($3), and Philip’s chips ($1.50) was about $22 (we drank water).

Mindy B’s is located at 828 Georgia Avenue, Chattanooga, TN 37402. They are open Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. You can call them at (423) 521-7932. They do not have a website, but you can like Mindy B’s Deli on Facebook.

By the way, I just found out that Mindy B’s has partnered with The Hunter Museum to open the Hunter Museum Café by Mindy B’s Deli. Check it out Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and on Free First Sundays from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m.

Peach Fried Pies with Raspberry Sauce

August 7, 2015

Peach fried pies with raspberry sauce combine the flavors of classic peach Melba with the Southern sensibility of a fried pie. When peaches are ripe in the summer, I can’t really think of anything better!

Once, a long time ago, I asked my Facebook followers (or maybe it was Twitter followers? It’s been years.) what they would consider Tennessee’s signature cake (after reading United Cakes of America and being pretty disappointed that the cake for Tennessee was an apple stack cake-which I’d never heard of-rather than something I would consider native, like red velvet or Italian cream cake). Beth from Local Milk remarked that she’d say that pie was actually Tennessee’s signature cake. Hmmm, I’d never thought of it like that.

It’s a good point, though. While there are certainly plenty of cakes that are traditional to the South and, more specifically, Tennessee, pies evoke a certain sense of homey coziness that seems pretty unique to the states below that Mason-Dixon. But there’s still that question: what pie is Tennessee’s signature pie? Buttermilk? Perhaps pecan? Chess? When I really started thinking about it, I realized that the pies that I grew up with were fried pies. That was it…maybe other Tennesseans haven’t had that experience, but for me, fried pies were Tennessee’s signature pie.

The fried pies that I grew up with (and still love!) were banana fried pies that my mom would make with canned biscuit dough. There is really nothing quite like them…oozy and gooey and sweet. I love them! I decided, though, that I wasn’t going to mess with those fried pies of my childhood…not now anyway. Instead, I decided to take the flavors of the season-peaches-and envelope them in pastry crust before frying them up and serving them with a raspberry dipping sauce to make peach Melba fried pies.

I never knew, though, that most fried pies are actually made with dried fruit. Apple, peach…both traditionally made with dried fruit. It makes sense, really…putting a bunch of wet, mushy peaches in the center of some pie dough before plunking them into some hot oil seems like a recipe for pie disaster to me. I wanted my peach Melba pies to contain fresh summer peaches, though…not bagged dried peaches from the store. Solution? Just cook the peaches with some brown sugar until it makes a thickened, syrupy sauce. Serve with a glorious red raspberry dipping sauce for beautiful peach fried pies with raspberry sauce. I rest my case.

6-8 pies

Peach Melba Fried Pies

15 minPrep Time:

20 minCook Time:

Save Recipe

Print Recipe

My Recipes My Lists My Calendar

Ingredients

For the crust (adapted from Southern Living's The Southern Pie Book)

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, chilled and cut into chunks
4-6 tablespoons ice water
1 teaspoon white vinegar
1 large egg, beaten

For the raspberry sauce

1 6-ounce container raspberries
1/4 cup granulated sugar
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 teaspoon cornstarch

For the pies

1/2 recipe of pie dough
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 large peaches, pit removed and thinly sliced
2 tablespoons brown sugar
3/4 cup canola or vegetable oil

Instructions

Make the crust: Stir together the flour and salt in a medium bowl. Cut in the butter until it resembles coarse crumbs. In a small bowl, whisk together 4 tablespoons ice water, the vinegar, and the egg. Add to the flour/butter mixture and stir until a ball forms, adding more of the water if needed (I needed a total of 5 tablespoons). Turn into a piece of plastic wrap and press into a disk. Refrigerate for at least an hour.
Make the raspberry sauce: Stir together all the ingredients in a small skillet. Cook and stir until the raspberries completely disintegrate. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve to remove the seeds. Pour into a jar and refrigerate until ready to serve.
Make the peach filling: Wipe out the skillet that you made the raspberry sauce in. Melt the butter over medium heat. Add the peaches and the brown sugar. Cook, stirring frequently, until the juices have reduced to a syrupy consistency. Pour into a bowl and cool to at least room temperature.
Cut the dough in half and save the refrigerate or freeze half for a later use (or double the recipe for the filling and make more pies). Allow to stand at room temperature for about 10 minutes. Roll onto a floured surface to about 1/8-inch thickness. Cut 5-inch rounds from the dough (I used a bowl to measure this). Fill each round with 1 heaping tablespoon of peach filling. Fold the edges over and use a fork to crimp closed. Place on a baking sheet in the refrigerator.
Re-roll the scraps and cut more rounds; repeat the filling process. While the pies are in the refrigerator, pour the oil into a 10-inch skillet. Preheat over medium heat until shimmering. Add half the pies and fry until golden, then flip and fry until golden on the other side. Remove to a paper towel lined plate to drain. Allow to cool briefly before serving. Serve each pie with about a tablespoon of oil.

Notes

The prep/cook time does not include time for the dough and the peach filling to chill. The dough recipe makes more than you will need. Refrigerate or freeze for later use, or double the recipe for the filling and make more pies!

https://chattavore.com/peach-fried-pies-raspberry-sauce/

Click here to print the recipe for peach fried pies with raspberry sauce!

Peach fried pies with raspberry sauce combine the flavors of classic peach Melba with the Southern sensibility of a fried pie. | recipe from Chattavore.com

« Previous Page