Recovering the Past: Gourdseed Corn and Real Cornbread

Gourdseed corn is a class of Southern dent corn that was commonly grown in North America prior to the arrival of colonists.  It traces its roots to Mexican teosinte (a wild plant from which corn developed) as do other corns, but it (and other Southern dent corns) developed distinctly from most corns such as flint and flour corns.  As the name implies, the kernel of gourdseed corn is longer, flatter, and skinnier than other dent corns.  It looks like a gourd seed.  In pre-colonial America, it also went by the name "tooth corn". 

Gourdseed corn was very common throughout the Southern colonies until the mid-1800s.  In the mid-1800s, the corn and cornmeal industry realized that they could replace these gourdseed corns (which were milled very fine and used to make wonderful breads and cakes without any leavening needed) with grittier dent corns, which needed baking powder (another product to sell...) to rise (Weaver 2008).  As time passed, gourdseed corn all but disappeared, being grown only by a few families throughout the South.  Southern Exposure Seed says that it was even thought extinct until some "Texas Gourdseed" (which actually originated in the Upper South) was found growing on a farm in Texas.  Southern Exposure Seed now offers two varieties, "Texas Gourdseed" and "Virginia Gourdseed" in their catalog.  They also continue to research and refine these varieties in hopes of truly rediscovering the original gourdseed corns.  

This season we grew "Virginia Gourdseed" corn.  It produced about 25-30 pounds of cornmeal from one 200' bed.  In comparison our heirloom, Southern dent corn (from the late 1800s) produces about 50 pounds per bed.  That said, this was not a typical season here climatically.  Although likely not cooler than it was 200 years ago, it was very cloudy and wet throughout the summer. Gourdseed corn reminds me a lot of "choclo" or Incan corn.  The ears are fat and stubby and stuffed with kernels.  The kernels are long and skinny.  The kernels are definitely softer than our dent corn and much softer than modern hybrids.  Ground, the meal is much more like flour.  The only downside is because it makes such a soft flour it requires more corn to make an equal amount of flour.

I have never been much of a corn person.  As a crop, modern corn varieties (without even entering into the GMO debate) drain soil fertility and need too much water to produce well.  In addition, they are bred for chemical agriculture, and thus have no built-in insect or disease resistance, meaning they also rely on chemical pesticides and fungicides.  They take too much and don't give enough back.  Modern corn is a fairly non-nutritious foodstuff that in my opinion isn't worth growing.  As a food, I have always found sweet corn entirely overrated.  I eat cornbread at holidays, but I have never really enjoyed it as a food.  Then, in 2009, we began growing heirloom corns, and I realized that corn had been mutilated.  We grow several varieties of heirloom corn every year.  Our favorite both in terms of production and eating quality is "Tennessee Red Cob".  It is incredibly drought resistant (we don't irrigate it), is very resistant to insect damage (tight ears), seems to be very disease resistant (we have never had any problems), and is very productive.  As a foodstuff, it makes the best cornbread I have ever had: moist, sweet, and incredibly flavorful. 

Last fall, about this time, we were discussing what seeds we would like to start saving on our farm.  It was a long conversation, too many wants for the amount of time and land that we have, but we kept coming back to heirloom corns.  See, first it was modern hybrids that almost did heirloom corn in, and now GMO corn threatens to make it extinct.  There are a handful of people out there working diligently to protect, hand-pollinate, and thus reproduce and save our heirloom corn varieties.  It is incredibly time-consuming, difficult work, and they all deserve our praise.  Because of our industrialized food system, industrialized agriculture, and GMOs, corn as a species is really endangered.  Growing heirloom corns, I have realized what corn is (or was).  It really is a wild crop (not so needy as modern hybrids make it seem).  It is supposed to have complex flavor (not just sugar sweet), and its meal is supposed to be fluffy, moist, and flavorful.  Corn should also be a nutritious grain, high in protein, carbohydrates, fiber, and minerals.  These corns make me want to grow and eat corn!  We will continue to grow and next season save "Virginia gourdseed" corn.  We hope you enjoy your "Virginia Gourdseed" cornmeal.  Here is a great gourdseed cornmeal recipe from Mother Earth News:

1 2⁄3 cups white gourdseed cornmeal, ground fine
1/3 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 cup rich milk (mix 2/3 cup milk with 1/3 cup cream) 

Sift together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt and baking soda in a deep work bowl. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs until lemon-colored and frothy, then whisk in the buttermilk. Gently fold together the dry and liquid ingredients.

While preparing the batter, heat a 10-inch cast iron frying pan in an oven preheated to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. When the pan is thoroughly hot, remove it from the oven, melt the butter in it and coat the inside of the pan using a brush. Add the batter and spread it evenly, and then pour in the cup of rich milk (do not stir or disturb the batter underneath). The milk poured over the bread creates a cheeselike “skin” on top, which gives added flavor and considerable eye appeal.

Set the pan on a middle rack in the preheated oven and bake 25 to 30 minutes, or until the cake tests dry in the center. Serve immediately with homemade butter.

To do your part, seek out non-GMO, heirloom corn and cornmeal from your local farmers, local coops and groceries, or from Anson Mills.  We have corn available for milling most of the year.  

see "Gourdseed Corn" by William Woys Weaver (2008) at http://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/gourdseed-corn.aspx

For those of you who plan to visit Asheville, our cornmeal is now featured at All Souls Pizza on Clingman Avenue in their gluten-free, polenta pizza!

Getting Ready for Winter

Hi fellow members, my name is Anna Laura and I was hired to help part-time at Care of the Earth this fall. I’d visited before, but getting to know Megan & Lalo, Evan Shea, and the farm over the past months has been a formative experience for me. My husband and I are now members, and I’m going to be writing for the blog now and then. So happy to be part of this community.

I wanted to write a blog post about the process of the farm moving into winter. Before I knew anything about farming, I imagined that fall and winter were “down time” for farmers—at least the ones who don’t grow year-round in greenhouses. But as September ended and October started ushering in cooler temperatures and shorter days, I saw the farm moving forward into the next year, actively preparing for the future. Lalo and I plowed and tilled cropland, Lalo mowed and turned spent summer crops under the soil, and I seeded cover crops—very different kinds of work than the weeding and harvesting we did in August and September. These kinds of work are preparatory: the cropland that grew your vegetables this year will be seeded with grasses and legumes and enter its time of rest, while acres that have been resting will be tilled, their cover crops turned into the soil to enrich it as it anticipates March planting. This kind of future-looking is what I do after periods of intense activity—why should I be surprised that farmers do, too?

Early in October, I got to the farm at 8:30, climbed up on the John Deere, and dragged the roto-tiller through two acres of plowed-up soil. This is really fun, even if it takes several hours. You get the tractor in line to start a new bed, put it in gear, set the tiller down, turn the tiller on, rev the engine up to 200 rpm, and let off the clutch.  One lurch and you’re moving, tooling away noisily down the brown earth.

That afternoon, I seeded those two acres with 50 lbs of oats, 30 lbs of red clover, and 10 lbs of alfalfa.  Megan is teaching me so much about the soil: what farmers have to do to keep their soil and crops healthy, and their vegetables nutrient-rich.  Cover crops, for instance, protect cropland from erosion while it’s lying fallow, help it to absorb more rainwater, and smother noxious weeds while adding nutrients to the soil.  It’s the best way to “fertilize” your land without adding chemical fertilizers to it.

This pairing, of oats with legumes (red clover and alfalfa), is genius.  Oat grow quickly, and, with their thick root system, can smother weeds and unwanted grasses in land you’re preparing to rest.  They die off over the winter, supposedly (they always did in Megan and Lalo’s farm in Poughkeepsie, but they didn’t die off over our last warm East Tennessee winter…), and open up the area for the clover, which will take over the next spring and flourish.  Red clover is able to draw nutrients from the air and deeper in the soil and store them in its roots, so that when it’s tilled under the next year—or the year after that—the soil will be super-rich.  Also, it loosens the soil.  Also, bees love it, and since Care of the Earth is blessed with a hive (or were—I heard a rumor the bees are getting moved), they are able to watch the cover crops and bees support each other.  How lovely.

One more thing about the legumes: you have to inoculate them—get this—with bacteria.  What.  Yes—treating your legumes with a dash of a particular bacterium will help it develop these “nodules” on its roots, which are where it will store nitrogen & other helpful things.  So you measure out 25 lbs of beautiful red clover and alfalfa seeds, splash in some water, dash in some bacteria, mix it with your hands, pour it into the seeder backpack, and start walking.  I walked every other tire track, spinning the seeds out in a spray.  Trying to turn that handle pretty fast while trying to walk pretty fast on uneven, soft ground is a lot harder than it sounds.  After seeding two acres with legumes and those two 50-lb bags of oats, everything hurt.

But, of course, I loved it.  What’s not to love about this kind of work?  There I was, using every muscle group to give richness to the soil, to prolong its life and the lives of all who draw life from what’s grown in it.  It was hard to feel like I was very helpful to anyone, including myself, in my last job (I was a grad student and First-Year Composition teacher at UT).  I had to dig a little to come up with reasons that teaching punctuation rules mattered.  I’m not knocking academics, of course—learning and teaching are some of my favorite things in the world—but I guess I needed to do something different, I needed to see a little more tangibly that what I do nourishes people. And seeing Megan and Lalo do it every day inspired me, and still inspires me.

Seeing cover crops growing this winter, the acres re-shuffling themselves, queuing up (and resting up) for next season, is a beautiful thing: see? 

--Anna Laura

Winter Greens

Cold winter temperatures means a few exciting veggies that we don’t have the opportunity to enjoy the rest of the year: radicchio, escarole, and watercress.  Each of these veggies brings back memories of my first few seasons at the farm in New York.  I turned my nose up at them, wondering how in the world these crazy Northerners choked these greens down.  Then, one late fall, a wonderful CSA member named Denise cooked me her traditional Italian soup with escarole, white beans, tomatoes, garlic, onions, and parmesan and brought it to me on a cold, late afternoon.  I took it with thanks but doubted the whole bike ride home if I would really eat it.  Well, I did.  I ate the whole quart!  And I was sold.  

Here are a couple ways I enjoy these stronger tasting greens...my advice to you, from a novice turned winter green lover, don’t eat them raw, don’t even try them, just make one of these great dishes and enjoy!

Traditional Italian Escarole Soup, from Denise

Saute two-four cloves garlic and half an onion in olive oil.  Add well-washed, chopped escarole.  Saute a few minutes.  Add 1 can tomatoes or 1 home-jarred pint.  Add 1 1/2-2c. cooked white beans (I add the juice, too.) or 1 can.  Cover with veggie broth, chicken broth, or water.  Salt.  Bring to a boil, reduce, and cook for about 30 minutes.  Ladle into bowls.  Add parmesan cheese and homemade croutons (or serve with crusty bread) and serve.

A take on this tradition...

Follow steps through white beans (you can use tomatoes or not).  Add croutons and parmesan cheese.  Mix thoroughly.  Place in a casserole.  Add more parmesan cheese (if you don’t put croutons, you can instead put bread crumbs at this step).  Bake at 375 for 20-30 minutes.

Veggie Soup with Escarole

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 medium onion, quartered and thinly sliced

2 to 3 cloves garlic, minced

6 medium or 4 large potatoes, preferably russet or golden, peeled and diced

2 to 3 medium carrots, thinly sliced

32-ounce carton low-sodium vegetable broth

1 teaspoon dried basil

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

One 16-ounce can cannellini (large white beans)

1 medium head (6 to 8 ounces) escarole, coarsely chopped and rinsed 

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a soup pot. Add the onion and sauté over medium heat until translucent. Add the garlic and continue to sauté until both are golden, stirring frequently.

Add the potatoes, carrots, broth, basil, thyme, and 2 cups water. Bring to a gentle boil, then cover and simmer gently for 20 minutes, or until the potatoes and carrots are tender.

Stir in the beans, escarole, and half of the parsley. Simmer gently for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the escarole is tender.

With the back of a wooden spoon or a potato masher, mash some of the potatoes in the soup to give it a nice base. Stir in water as needed (up to 2 cups). The soup should be thick, but not overly so. Return to a simmer. Stir in the remaining parsley, season with salt and pepper, then serve.

If time allows let the soup stand off the heat for an hour or more before serving, then heat through as needed.

Watercress...this one really throws people who try it raw because it seems well, hot, like the hot mustard they serve in Chinese restaurants (related...).  But cooked, its lovely.  Every winter when the watercress gleams on the surface of wet (sometimes frozen) brown dirt, I run like a little girl to snatch it up, except its watercress not chocolate.  See, I have been waiting 12 long months to make watercress mashed potatoes!  I realized while making them tonight for dinner that arugula would probably make a very adequate substitute and wondered if my once a year joy could in fact be had many more months of the year.  Anyways, here’s how you do it:

Watercress Mashed Potatoes

Boil potatoes!  While those are boiling, cook chopped leeks over low heat in butter (yes, butter!) and a little salt.  When the leeks have really cooked down, add chopped watercress (wash it several times, it grows on the ground!).  Cook 5 minutes.  Add about 1/4c. or 1/2 c. milk, cream, almond milk...  Heat.  Add cooked potatoes.  Mash the whole thing up.  If you really want to go crazy, add cheddar cheese and bacon and call them loaded!  Serve with whatever you want.  We had them with portobello mushrooms.

Lalo’s favorite: wash watercress well.  Drain.  Squeeze a whole lemon over it.  Add some salt.  Let marinate for a while.  Serve over fish tacos.  It is really yummy!

Radicchio...okay, so I’m still not a huge fan of the round, red ball of a radicchio that they sneak into those pre-bagged lettuce mixes, but sugarloaf radicchio is a whole different animal.  

I copy this from Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook (http://kitchen-notebook.blogspot.com/2009/01/pain-de-sucre-sugarloaf-chicory.html) because she says it so well:

“This time of year, pain de sucre is found in bins amid the winter varietal greens, spinach, the many strains of radicchio chicory, nestled between the squash and pumpkins. Tender looking elongated tightly packed loaves, in English called Sugarloaf Chicory, tumble gladly into my market basket. While it's still dark in the early evenings, I walk down to the Wednesday night market at Place Carnot where the local farmers come once a week and keep an eye out for it.

I like to cook my pain de sucre by slicing it into chunks, rinsing the leaves, and lightly poaching them in a billowy herbal broth that's been simmered with a big winter bouquet and a ham bone. Chicory goes with pork. I float the poached leaves with the meat and herbs, sometimes adding wedges of pumpkin or topping the soup with shavings of good hard cheeses. A spritz of lemon juice, a drizzle of olive oil, and a grind of rose peppercorns or sichuan pepper acts like a little taste ladle that captures the bitter goodness and lifts it up for a second boost of winter satisfaction. Wrap yourself in a sweater, sip this soup in a chair by the window, slurp the bitter greens, and settle in for an afternoon soaking up some prose.”

I assume that radicchio does go well with pork.  Although I am eating meat now, pork is still not my meat of choice, but some turkey bacon would do the trick.

Radicchio is also really good with blue cheese, which Lalo hates and I love, so I make meals like these knowing I will receive complaints or even questions as to whether it will kill us, but I still enjoy it mightily. 

Risotto with Radicchio, Walnuts and Blue Cheese
About 6 1/2 cups vegetable or chicken stock
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1 onion, chopped into 1/4 inch dice
1 stalk celery, chopped into 1/4 inch dice
1 clove garlic, minced
1 head radicchio, cored and cut into thin strips (chiffonade)
2 cups risotto rice
1/2 cup prosecco or white wine
3/4 cup crumbled blue cheese
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup toasted walnuts

Bring the stock to a boil in a large pot.

Heat the olive oil and butter in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the onion and celery, and cook until soft and translucent, about 5-7 minutes. Add the garlic and radicchio; cook for 1 minute.

Add the rice. Stir for about 1 minute. Add the prosecco, and simmer until it has evaporated. Stir in a ladleful of the stock. Cook, adding the stock a ladleful at a time, and allowing it to be absorbed by the rice before adding more. Cook until the rice is just tender to the bite, or ‘al dente’. You may not use all of the stock.

Stir in the cheese, and season with salt and pepper. Divide between 4 serving plates, garnish with walnuts and serve.