Family Recipe Friday: Mom's Cornbread

My mother's cornbread is legendary.  Everyone loves it.  Anyone who has eaten at her table raves about it and inevitably wants the recipe.  The irony is that no one believes how simple the recipe is.  How could something that taste so good have only three bland ingredients?!  Now everyone, or least the southern cooks I know, makes their cornbread a little differently.  Some add egg, some add oil, some even bake it.  My mother's is even more simple than that.  However, there are a couple of tricks that make it what it is. 

Linda's cornbread

Approximately 3 tablespoons of cornmeal
Approximately 1 tablespoon of self-rising flour
Enough water to make a paste, but not too much

Drop by tablespoon fulls into hot cooking oil in a cast iron frying pan.

Cook to a golden brown on each side.  

Makes about 4-5 pieces.  Adjust quantities in the proper ratios as needed.

Did you catch the secret ingredients?  Or the "tricks" I referenced earlier?  It's the self-rising flour and the cast iron frying pan.  Now not many of us cook with cast iron anymore, with all the smooth top stoves out there.  However, I can tell you from personal experience, it makes all the difference in the world.  My cornbread, cooked in a regular aluminum frying pan is good, but it's not great like my mom's.