Chris's Week Forty-One Recipe: Southern Chicken Upside-Down Dinner

The best laid plans....

I was going to make chicken vegetable soup for lunch today with chicken & peppers I had gotten fresh at the Woodbury farmer's market. I put the chicken on to boil and started chopping peppers and every single one of them was moldy inside. Well, that put me right off vegetables for lunch! So, I grabbed my trusty Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook (c. 1950) and made the following. The recipe below is verbatim except for reduced salt in both the creamed chicken and cornbread mixture.

Southern Chicken Upside-Down Dinner

Creamed Chicken

Melt:

6 T butter

Whisk in:

6 T flour

1/2 t salt

1/8 t pepper

Cook over low heat until bubbling. Remove from heat and stir in:

1.5 c chicken broth

1 cup milk (the original recipe calls for cream or top milk)

Bring to a boil and and boil 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add:

1 cup cut-up cooked chicken (ok... I was generous with my chicken, call it 1.5 cups)

Cornbread

Whisk together in a bowl:

1 c sifted flour

1 c cornmeal

2 T sugar

2 t baking powder

1/2 t salt

1/2 t baking soda

Cut in finely:

3 T shortening (I used Crisco)

Add, stirring just enough to blend:

1 c buttermilk or sour milk (I used lemon juice to make sour milk)

Put 2/3 of the creamed chicken mixture into a greased 2 qt baking dish and top with the cornbread mixture. Bake at 400F for 25 minutes.

NB: The cookbook adds: "Serve hot, upside-down, cut into wedges, with rest of chicken mixture over it." I just scooped it out of the casserole, but you could definitely turn this over onto a platter. I also saved the rest of the creamed chicken for another meal.

Would I make this recipe again? Yeah, I would! Don't be discouraged if it looks like the cornmeal kind of sinks in and doesn't exactly cover the top of the creamed chicken. It will be ok when it bakes.