Green Cornbread

Intro
August's "The Daring Kitchen" challenge is a cornmeal. Right away, cornmeal almond cake come to my mind that I read about just yesterday in "El Farol: Tapas and Spanish Cuisine".
Although after initial excitement, cooling down, I decided to cook plain cornbread. Well, "plain" is too boring for me. So to jazz up "plain bread" I added some ingredients that, I think, are natural fit for the cornbread - a lot of fresh herbs, some extra eggs and, of course, nuts. To make bread truly "green" I used pistachio nuts (luckily they were sitting in a cardboard miraculously not eaten by my sonny, just yet :)
It was not my first ever cornbread, I made cornbread before - rarely I have that strange urge to make one. Once satisfied, that urge do not come back for a while.. then.. boom.. again - I have to make cornbread right now! Usually, I do not keep previous recipe and have to search for one again. I think, this time this recipe deserves to be written down - bread come out very nice - moist, very flavorful, a bit grainy (is that its graininess that we crave sometimes?), with special cornbread aroma hitting you in waves.

Notes along the way
- I definitely have to try that Almond Cornmeal Cake I mentioned above. With a distinctive flavor of cornmeal it may be very interesting ending results :)
- I'm glad that its green color bread gets from herbs, green onion and pistachios and not from a pinch of artificial color.
- I probably can call this recipe my own, as there is nothing but cornbread, sour cream and salt are left from original recipe I adapted it from.

Green Cornbread

To serve 8 generous slices:

1 c unbleached wheat flour
1 c yellow cornmeal
1 tsp baking soda
1.5 tsp baking powder
2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp salt
1 small bunch fresh cilantro, finely chopped
1 small bunch fresh parsley, finely chopped
5-6 green onions
3 eggs
3 tbs brown sugar
1 c sour cream
4 tbs ghee  or butter
1/2 c pistachio nuts, shelled

- Mix first 6 dry ingredients.

- In a separate bowl, beat together eggs, brown sugar and sour cream until smooth and well mixed (about 2 minutes with my handheld mixer).

- On a stovetop, on low heat, melt ghee (or butter) (I used cast iron skillet for this).

- Add egg mix, herbs and onions to the dry mix, stir everything together. Add to the batter half of melted butter from the skillet.

- Preheat your oven to 375F.

- Transfer your bread mix into preheated skillet with a melted ghee (butter). Sprinkle with pistachios. Let it cook on a stove top on medium-high heat for 1 minute and then move skillet into preheated oven. Bake for about 40-60 minutes until golden-brown.

- Remove from the oven and let it rest for about 20-30 minutes.

- Now cut a slice and enjoy! It's nice all alone, or with chili or vegetable stew.

Blog-checking lines: Rachael of pizzarossa was our August 2012 Daring Cook hostess and she challenged us to broaden our knowledge of cornmeal! Rachael provided us with some amazing recipes and encouraged us to hunt down other cornmeal recipes that we’d never tried before – opening our eyes to literally 100s of cuisines and 1000s of new-to-us recipes!