Recipe: Thomasina Miers’ Californian Cornbread
Serve breakfast sunny side up with this dish inspired by The Golden State
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Thomasina Miers, founder of Mexican restaurant chain Wahaca, shares her recipe for Californian cornbread and reveals her kitchen rules…
Recipe: Cornbread with Goat’s Cheese & Honey Butter
A trip to California got me into cornbread. The corn was quite unlike English corn, so juicy and sweet. The Californians seemed to eat it with everything from rich meat braises to light salads and eggs for breakfast. This recipe was a total hit when we put it on the Wahaca menu, and was developed from a recipe in an old Chez Panisse cookbook. The smokiness and heat from the chillies balances the sweetness of the honey.
Ingredients
Serves 4
- 100ml whole milk
- 240ml buttermilk
- 3 eggs
- 165g sweetcorn kernels
- 100g plain flour
- 180g fine polenta
- 30g soft brown sugar
- 1 tsp fine salt
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 80g butter
- 3 spring onions, halved and very finely sliced
Goat’s Cheese
- 250g soft goat’s cheese
- 75ml whole milk
- 25ml olive oil
Chipotle Honey Butter
- 125g butter
- 35g chipotle in adobo, very finely chopped
- 50g honey
- Squeeze of lime juice
To Serve
- Butter, to fry
- 4 eggs
- Large handful of rocket, dressed with olive oil and lime juice
Method
- Preheat oven to 180°C and butter a 900g loaf tin. Blend the milk, buttermilk, eggs and 100g of the sweetcorn. Put the flour, polenta, sugar, salt and baking powder into a large bowl and whisk to combine. Melt the butter and add to the dry ingredients, along with the egg mixture, spring onions and remaining sweetcorn. Mix together.
- Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 45 mins or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tin for 30 mins and then on a wire rack.
- Blitz the goat’s cheese, milk and olive oil in a blender and season with salt and pepper. It should be light and fluffy. For the chipotle honey butter, melt the butter, add the chipotle and honey and whisk until incorporated. Season with the lime juice and salt, to taste.
- Cut the bread into slices the thickness of two £1 coins and fry in butter to warm through. Fry the eggs until crisp. Serve the bread with 1–2 heaped tbsp of the goats’ cheese, a handful of dressed rocket, a fried egg and a generous drizzle of chipotle honey butter.
Recipe extracted from Home Cook by Thomasina Miers, £25 (Guardian Faber)
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