We’re home from our American Thanksgiving gallivants, and dinner tonight is comfort food. For us, comfort food is often chili and cornbread*.

Chili is not really a recipe. Tonight’s has: onions, garlic, Serranos from the garden, salt, cumin, ancho chili, smoked paprika, epazote, yellow paprika, cocoa powder, ground beef, and crushed tomatoes. Other nights might have a different combination of peppers, maybe no epazote, and beans. Tonight’s would also have kale, if I had any, because I have a bad habit of sneaking kale into many things**.

My basic cornbread is pretty much just that, basic. I’m too much of a Northerner to claim any special cornbread skills or lore. It is good though.

• 6 oz. corn meal
• 2 oz. whole wheat flour (or other flour)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp Aleppo Pepper***
• 8 oz (1 c.) milk (any kind)
• 2 eggs
• 4 0z. butter, plus a little for the pan

If you have a 8 to 10 inch cast iron skillet, put the cold butter in the skillet and put the skillet in the oven before preheating. (If not, just butter an 8 or 9 inch square or round pan.) Preheat oven (and skillet) to 350º.

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl. In a separate container (that will hold at least two cups), whisk together the eggs and milk. Once the butter is melted (melt it separately if not using a cast iron skillet), whisk it into the milk and eggs. (Put the skillet back in the oven while doing the final mixing.) Fold together the liquid and dry ingredients until just mixed. Scrape into the prepared pan and bake until firm and lightly browned, ~20 minutes.

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*I also almost immediately made banana bread from the bananas that had languished here while we were out. It was almost as immediately gone. I’d share that recipe, but I just use one of Smitten Kitchen’s, so really you should just get it from her.

**Because I actually like kale.

***Here’s a connection I often think about when opening my spice drawer – Aleppo Pepper is originally from Aleppo, Syria. Syrian supplies have dried up due to the war there. I get Aleppo Pepper from Penzey’s, which imports it from Turkey, but I still never use it without thinking how global our connections are and without hoping for peace the people of Syria.