Chow Rhode Island, Episode 2: Jonnycakes

My Nashville-born father raised me to disdain the cornbread us Yankees make. It's too sweet and cake-like; when I make cornbread I'll halve the sugar in a given recipe. Often, if I'm feeling zesty, I'll toss in some cheese or jalapenos. But that's beside the point. The point is that this Yankee-style sweet cornbread crap was always referred to in the Edwards-Orr household as "Johnnycake". Imagine, then, my surprise upon moving to Rhode Island and learning that us Yankees in fact do make something called jonnycake, but it sure as hell ain't sweet.



Subject: Jonnycake
Aliases: Johnnycake, Journey cake
Major Features: Corn
Minor Features: Water, milk, salt, sugar


Traditional jonnycake is made with stone-ground corn, milk and/or water, and some salt. The result is a thin gruel-like batter which, when applied to a hot skillet, becomes thin pancake-like flatbread. This is serious staple food here, folks. Wheat doesn't grow well here in New England, so people had to make do with corn--flint corn usually. You'd bring your corn down to the local miller (you DO have a local miller, don't you?), he'd take a percentage off the top and grind up your corn. Then--hooray--you probably won't starve this winter. What I'm trying to say is...

Assessment: They bland. I was really hoping for a nice rich--or even noticeable--corn flavor, but was disappointed. Even after doubling the salt, trying different skillet temperatures and volume of cooking oil, adjusting the cooking time, I couldn't get the things to taste like anything other than calories. Which, granted, they did very very well. After just a few of this puppies I was full up. I understand why jonnycakes are supposed to be good traveling food. Eventually, I gave up and started topping them with butter, which helped immensely. Laura skipped the "science" part and went straight for the maple syrup.

Conclusion: Well, now I'm confused as hell. I've just done some more reading and have come across a pretty wide variety of recipes, including this video on Kenyon's website of someone's grandma making jonnycakes with sugar and no salt. I'd been following Gray's recipe, which says nothing about boiling water. Er... this might warrant an Episode 2.1

They are attractive, though.