It took some doing to get that corn ground as I had to figure out the grinder. I called the number on the website and the outgoing message sounded like someone's personal cellphone or something! No one called me back. Strange. They have a website with no email option, only a phone number, and they ignore messages. Sheesh!
Anyhoo, this is what I did so far: I put 3 cups cornmeal and a teaspoon of sea salt in a pot with 6 cups of water, and put it on a medium flame and stirred it with a whisk for about 10 minutes until it thickened and started to blub. I ate tortilla chips with guacamole while stirring. Gotta get all the details so I can recreate it if it comes out yummy!
After turning off the heat, I added a cup of lard and a half cup of sugar and attempted to stir it in. The lard just did not want to be incorporated! I finally got it mostly stirred in and added a cup of dry cornmeal, which made the lard very happy. It is cooling on my stove. I will put it into a big glass crock that I use for long raising/soaking bread recipes and let it sit for the required 2-4 days.
I'm hoping it will be perfect for Saturday, since that is when I plan on cooking up the three roosters that are cooling/aging in the fridge right now.
It is stinkin' hot here. It makes me feel faint just THINKING about cooking chickens for hours in the oven and then cooking cornbread!
Day Two, and it still smells like cornmeal....and there are some spots of blue mold starting to form. Shoot. I will let it go another day at least and scrape the mold off. At least that is the plan. No signs of fermentation yet. Maybe next time I'll add a glug of whey and not add any unboiled corn. It got pretty thick with the 6:3 ratio of water:cornmeal. If I up the cornmeal a bit in the ratio, I probably can get away without adding any unboiled corn. Then if I add a little whey, the good beasties might stand a chance.
Thanks for the update Free. I still haven't had a chance to play with this yet but hoping for Monday as I'm off from both jobs. I'll go change the thread title right now