Mushroom and Kale Heirloom Cornbread

If you consider yourself a foodie, you need to follow Kenji Lopez and his blog, Serious Eats.  I adapted his delicious cornbread recipe to use up some fresh ground heirloom red cornmeal and the overflow bounty of kale that showed up last Friday in my farm box, along with some mushrooms I had on hand.    What I liked about this recipe is that it is not your typical sweet cake-type cornbread ala Marie Callendar's.  I think most people would agree that sweet cornbread (especially drizzled with honey butter) is delicious.  However,  if  you are watching your sugar and carb intake very carefully like I am, you need to make choices with what you eat. 


This recipe was a great compromise between sweet and savory and produced a very hearty, earthy bread that could practically be a meal by itself.   What I especially loved was the strong mushroom flavor this had, and how wonderful the candy cap mushrooms made the house smell as it baked.  If you have never used them before, candy cap mushrooms are the most amazing thing ever.  They smell like maple syrup and are often called the dessert mushroom.  I first discovered them at Far West Fungi, a great mushroom shop in San Francisco's Ferry Building. I was walking past the store and could smell them through their sealed packaging as I passed by.  Too hard to resist - I had to try this unique mushroom, so I bought a package of dried candy caps and made this awesome butternut squash and candy cap mushroom creme brulee from the chef at Pine Ridge Vineyards:  http://www.touringandtasting.com/desserts/pine-ridge-butternut-creme-brulee

I will admit, candy caps are not inexpensive, but I had 1/2 a bag left over from the creme brulee and this cornbread recipe seemed especially suited for them.  When I read Kenji's post about making cornbread that wasn't sweet, it struck me that I could use these mushrooms to add sweetness without adding sugar.  To intensify the mushroom taste, I also decided to add a package of shitakes that had been in my fridge way too long, and were starting to dehydrate. 

You can find the base recipe at this link (I don't think it's right to just copy someone else's recipe, so sorry for the redirect): http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/01/moist-and-tender-brown-butter-cornbread-recipe.html  However, I will share the modifications I made.    

1) In place of the fine yellow cornmeal called for in Kenji's recipe, I used 1 cup of coarse-ground heirloom red corn cornmeal.  This added protein, gave the bread a very robust wholesome flavor, and intensified the crunch this bread derives from being cooked in a cast iron skillet.

2) To pack this cornbread with vegetables,  I added the following items to the wet ingredients in step 2 of Kenji's recipe:

• 2 cups fresh lacinato kale, stems removed, cut into slivers

• 1 thick slice (3/8 inch) of yellow onion, minced (LOVED the way this tasted in the bread)

• 1 cup of fresh shitake mushrooms, finely chopped

• 1/2 oz dried candy cap mushrooms, ground into powder in a spice grinder (or a high speed blender) 

I followed the rest of the recipe as described, including baking the cornbread in a cast iron skillet.  It turned out great.  As soon as it was ready to cut open, I couldn't resist spreading a slice with some truffle butter for that ultimate mushroom rush.