THE ULTIMATE MEALIE BREAD
- Irene Elaine
- Nov 2, 2022
- 2 min read
Serves 6 Being half Afrikaans means that ‘mealie bread’ (or corn bread) with syrup was something that I grew-up with and loved as a child. That is why I felt it was important to bring back one of my old-school favourite childhood dishes, with a contemporary twist on the traditional recipe.
INGREDIENTS
For the Mealie Bread:
1 cup of polenta
415g tin of creamed sweetcorn
1/3 cup castor sugar or honey (I prefer to use sugar)
1 cup of buttermilk
3 ½ tsp. baking powder
1 egg
¼ cup sunflower oil (have a little extra to grease the inside of your pot)
150g soft or Danish feta, to garnish
8 rashers of streaky bacon, chopped (optional)
handful micro-herbs or rocket, to garnish
1 tsp. salt
For the Sweet Chilli Sauce:
½ cup sweet chilli sauce
3 tbsp. water
METHOD
Preheat the oven to 190˚C/374˚F. Grease the Dutch oven pot (cast-iron pot) with a little sunflower oil.
In a big mixing bowl add in your dry ingredients first. Sift in the flour, baking powder, castor sugar and salt. Then add in the polenta.
Once all your dry ingredients are added in, add in the buttermilk, egg, sunflower oil and creamed sweetcorn.
Give the mixture a good stir, until all ingredients are well-combined.
Pour into the greased Dutch oven pot, and cook for +-30 minutes (prick the bread with a toothpick, if it comes out clean, the bread is ready). Remove from the oven, and set aside to cool.
While the bread is cooling. Fry your bacon until crispy and pat with some paper towel to remove the excess grease from it. At the same time, in a saucepan, add the sweet chilli sauce and water. Heat the sauce up on a medium heat. When the sauce has heated up and thinned in consistency, remove from the heat and pour over the mealie bread. Pouring it evenly so that the mealie bread absorbs the sauce nicely.
Finish off with the crispy bacon, crumbled feta and scattered micro herbs on top.
This is my take on one of my favourite classic dishes. I chose to swop out the regular corn meal for polenta to bring in a bit of my European roots to the dish as well. With the addition of feta and rocket, it really is a good mix of South African and Mediterranean flavours harmoniously combined for one great dish! Plus, if you don't add the bacon it is a yummy vegetarian meal option too.
Comments