Beans & Cornbread (had a fight ... but don't you worry, it worked out allright!)

Beans and Cornbread had a fight
Beans knocked Cornbread outta sight
Cornbread said,  "Now that’s alright, meet me on the corner tomorrow night"
I'll be ready, I'll be ready tomorrow night
I'll be ready, I'll be ready tomorrow night
I'll be ready, I'll be ready tomorrow night 

 --Louis Jordan, "Beans 'n Cornbread" 

In the famous Louis Jordan song I quote above, beans and cornbread start out fighting, but by the end of the song, they become best of friends and realize that they go together like "hot cakes and molasses," "strawberries and shortcake," and "sour cream and biscuits." Silly beans and cornbread! I knew it all along.

You see, as I've mentioned before, while it's true that I grew up with almost no proper culinary traditions to speak of, there are a couple exceptions (not counting frozen tuna noodle casserole and seven layer salad, which I freely admit to craving from time to time), and they both come from my great grandmother.  I only got to meet my tough West Virginia granny few times as a very young girl, but the dishes she made - buttermilk battered chicken fried in a cast iron skillet and bean soup and cornbread - have always stuck with me. Even my mom, who famously hated to cook, used to make this dish on occasion. In Grandma Daisy's version, smoky navy bean soup is poured over sweet cornbread, and eaten with thin slices of raw onion on top. And if this combo sounds weird to you - just trust me. Even Poppa Trix didn't believe me until I proved it to him, and now he is a firm believer. 

Of course granny and my mom always made this with a ham hock to get the smoky undertone.  Now I'm not going to lie - I have been eating some pork lately for work and school things, and I admit that it's been pretty tasty. But if I can make something taste right without it - then I'm going to leave it out. And that's what I did here, by substituting liquid smoke for pork. (Sorry, Granny!)

Like many of the best Southern dishes, this isn't so much a recipe as it is just feeling and tasting your way through. I started out by sauteing a large chopped yellow onion in a few tablespoons of butter over medium high heat in a stockpot until translucent.  I added a few cloves of chopped garlic and sauteed for a few more minutes. Next, I added 2 pounds of rinsed, fresh navy beans - but you could use dried beans. I added vegetable stock (you could use chicken stock) to just cover the beans by about an inch, then covered and simmered until they were tender, adding broth to the pot as needed. At this point I seasoned with salt and pepper, added a few small drops of liquid smoke, turned the heat down real low, and just let things come together. It sounds so simple, but those navy beans work some magic on that broth. 

I decided to make my cornbread in a cast iron skillet like granny would have done:

 

I used Homesick Texan's recipe (using butter, not lard), and while it was moist and corny and everything you want cornbread to be, there was just one problem: It wasn't quite sweet enough. For me, bean soup over cornbread depends on the play of sweet and savory, along with the bite from the sliced onions. So next time, I would definitely add some sugar or go with a recipe that's intended to be sweet. Nonetheless,  this dish really took me back. I hope granny would approve - and I know my mom would have loved it.

I feel like many people associate cornbread with summertime, but I promise you this dish is a comforting and belly-warming dish for the fall as well.  And if you don't believe me, then surely you'll listen to Louis Jordan!