Episode 4: Cornbread with Tina Mozelle Braziel

Welcome to Rural Food Traditions, a podcast series of Rural Remix. We’re starting where many meals across diverse food traditions begin: with bread. Food is a uniter; and across culinary traditions, bread is a common thread. On this episode, Tina Mozelle Braziel, a poet and author living in rural Alabama, shares her secrets to cornbread, what life is like in the glass cabin she built with her husband, and some of her poetry. 

The Chef

Tina Mozelle Braziel  is a poet and the author of Known by Salt; she is the winner of the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry and the 2022 Alabama Library Association Author Award for poetry. Her work has also appeared in POETRY, The Cincinnati Review, Southern Humanities Review, and other journals. She directs the Ada Long Creative Writing Workshop at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She and her husband, novelist James Braziel, live and write in a glass cabin that they have built by hand in rural Alabama. They co-authored The Glass Cabin, a book about their experience building their home.  

The Recipe
Tina in blue shirt holding cornbread

Cornbread

Tina Mozelle Braziel shares this recipe for cornbread from her home in Alabama.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup stone-ground cornmeal — McEwen & Sons coarse ground is the best
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2/3 cup buttermilk
  • 2 tablespoons peanut oil plus enough peanut oil to cover the bottom of an 8" skillet
  • One large egg

Instructions

  1.   Pour oil in an 8" iron skillet, place in an oven, and preheat to 425 degrees. Combine the dry ingredients. Mix buttermilk, the 2 tbsp of oil, and the egg in a separate vessel. Then stir the wet mix into the dry ingredients just until moistened. Pour batter into the skillet once the skillet spits back at water and the oven is heated to 425 degrees. The batter should sizzle as it is poured into the hot oil. Bake at 425 degrees for 17-18 minutes or until browned.     

Notes

Variation: Add grated cheese and/or diced chili peppers to the top of the cornbread batter just before baking if desired.

 

 

 

Show Notes

To purchase Glass Cabin: https://www.clydehillpublishing.com/glass-cabin 

To learn more about the Glass Cabin: https://www.glasscabindiary.com/ 

or go to Instagram: @glasscabindiary  

To learn more about James Braziel: https://www.jamesbraziel.com/ 

To learn more about Tina Mozelle Braziel: https://tinamozellebraziel.com/ 

IG: @tinamozellebraziel 

Facebook: Tina Mozelle Braziel  

X: @tinamozelle 

To purchase This Ditch-Walking Love: https://livingstonpress.uwa.edu/This%20Ditch-Walking%20Love.htm To purchase Birmingham, 35 Miles: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/17815/birmingham-35-miles-by-james-braziel/ 

To purchase Snakeskin Road: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/17816/snakeskin-road-by-james-braziel/9780553906783/ 

To purchase Known by Salt: https://www.anhingapress.org/poetry/known-by-salt-by-tina-mozelle-braziel 

To purchase Rooted by Thirst: https://porkbellypress.com/poetry/rooted 

 

About the Series

Rural Food Traditions is a production of Rural Remix.  Original music was composed by Quincy Ponvert and Leo Posel. This series was written and produced by Teresa Collins and edited by Susannah Broun. Assistant producers are Tracy Staley and Anya Slepyan. The Executive Producer is Joel Cohen. Rural Remix is a co-production of the Daily Yonder and the Rural Assembly, projects of the Center for Rural Strategies.

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