It's Thanksgiving: Bring on the Corn Pudding

Photo by Patrick Hajzler

Southern cooking is full of puddings. Bread Pudding. Rice pudding. Sweet potato pudding. Corn pudding. Put a "pudding" on there and it's all good.  The only time I remember having this yummy side dish is at Thanksgiving and Christmas. The rest of the time we either ate frozen corn niblets or freshly picked Silver Queen corn from my great-uncle's kitchen garden. (The joke was that you didn't pick the corn until the water in the pot was boiling.)
I pretty much never met a corn dish I didn't love and I still have a fondness for corn somthered in melted cheddar cheese with red pepper flakes, a staple of my college diet.
If you'd like to add a little pizazz to your vegetable sides this holiday, why not try corn in its most quintessential southern form?

CORN PUDDING

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

2 cups cooked corn kernels

3 Tbsp. melted butter

1/2 cup flour

4 tsp. granulated sugar

4 eggs

4 cups non-fat milk

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1/2 tsp. ground black pepper

dash salt

Prep a baking dish with non-stick spray.

Combine flour, salt, seasonings and sugar.

Add corn and melted gutter.

Add the eggs to the milk and stir.

Add the egg/milk mixture to the dry mixture and pour into the baking pan.

Bake for 40 minutes or until pudding is firm.

Bread Pudding is Food of the Gods

My friend Berkeley has never tasted bread pudding. For someone born in the south, that is practically incomprehensible. (Once, on a visit to New Orleans, I ate my weight in bread pudding, beginning with the signature souffle bread pudding at Commander's Palace and Ending with the classic dessert at Bon Ton Cafe, which was the overwhelming pick of the cabbies I consulted. New Orleans cabbies know food like Chicago cabbies know sports so I wasn't about to miss what Bon Ton Cafe had to offer.) Recipes for both versions are readily available online, so you can easily try both.

Berkeley's birthday is next Tuesday, so I'll be taking her to a restaurant here in Los Angeles, Les Sisters, that is the closest thing to honest-to-God Southern food you can get. In addition to bread pudding, they also serve sweet potato pie, peach cobbler and buttermilk pie. I had to explain buttermilk pie to Berkeley too. Poor, poor deprived child.

If you haven't had bread pudding in awhile, or never, here's the recipe I learned from my grandmother.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Enough bread to fill a baking dish—torn into small pieces
2 cups milk
¼ cup butter
2/3 cup light brown sugar
3 eggs
¾ cup chocolate chips
2 ½ tsp. ground cinnamon
½ tsp. ground nutmeg
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Combine the milk and butter in a saucepan, stirring until the butter is melted. Cool slightly.

Beat the sugar and spices into the eggs until frothy. Add the vanilla extract.

Combine the egg mixture and the milk mixture slowly. (Make sure the milk isn’t too hot or the raw eggs will curdle.)

Mix in the bread and turn everything into a baking dish that has been greased or treated with non-stick spray.

Don’t pack the bread down too tightly or the “pudding” will compact and get really dense instead of staying moist and fluffy with those delicious buttery, crunchy bits.

Bake for 45-55 minutes until the “pudding” is set. Serve warm as is or add a few spoonfuls of whipped cream.