I make a very decaently rich corn casserole for most of the big holidays. Ths dish is outstanding and one of my most requested recipes. When I decided to post the corn casserole recipe online, I asked a friend who absolutely loves my corn dish if he would like to write a few words about it for the intro. This is what he wrote:
HEATHER'S CORN
A quarter of a million. Well, 246,375 to be exact. That’s how many meals the average American person has in his or her lifetime. I’ve already had approximately 154,755 of mine, and to be honest, I probably remember only a few hundred of them at best. Being a rather corpulent person, I have intermittently wasted many of my allotted repasts gnawing away at meager morsels in hopes of someday regaining the ability to breath inaudibly. There are times, however, when I disregard the fact that I often sweat heavily while doing the dishes or almost black out when looking for my missing TV remote under the couch, and give in to eating something so hedonistically delectable that it’ll make all of the disapproving voices in my head shut the hell up. That’s when I reach for a big ol’ heapin’ bowl of Heather’s Cornucopian Coronary Corn!
More of a challenge to your circulatory system than a dish, Heather’s Corn overrides the annoyingly beneficial, and decidedly gross, nutrients of maize such as Vitamins C & B6, Folic & Pantothenic Acid, Thiamine and Riboflavin with the life-affirming deliciousness of fat, grease and salt. She combines savory bacon (and its resplendent grease), rich sour cream and tangy sharp goat's cheddar cheese with the deft subtlety of a garbage can fire ensconced stubum. Richly flavored and eye-wateringly pungent each mouthful overwhelms the senses, stimulates the release of endorphins and transports the eater to a higher astral plane...........um.....that’s how it affects me anyway......Did I mention that I’m fat?
Anyway, with only 27 years, 9 months and 89,505 meals left I think I’ll turn my back on conventional wisdom as well as the urban legends of Diabetes, Heart Decease and Stroke and ladle out a big helping of Heather’s Corn now and again. After all, food should be memorable and life expectancies are for wimps.
Wow. Thank you, Brian, for that glowing recommendation.
So here is the much-requested recipe:
Ingredients
1/2 pound of good quality bacon (go with nitrate-free, we don't really want you to have a heart attack)
1 large yellow onion
2 twelve ounce bags of frozen corn, thawed
4 big garlic cloves
1/4 cup of whole milk, from a goat or cow
1 cup of full-fat sour cream (fat is integral to this dish)
1/2 pound of sharp Goat's milk cheddar cheese, shredded
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/4 cup of chopped fresh chives (it should have at least something green in it, right?)
Directions
Chop the bacon into small pieces. Cook the chopped bacon in a large pot over low heat until fully cooked. Take the bacon out and set aside (but leave all the flavorful bacon drippings in the pot.) Chop the red onion. Cook the chopped onion in the bacon drippings over medium to low heat till slightly browned. Finely mince the garlic. Add both the minced garlic and the thawed corn to the pot. Cook for about 3 to 5 minutes stirring often. You want to brown everything a little bit but stop just before the garlic burns. Add the whole milk, full-fat sour cream, sea salt and black pepper. Stir well, and scrape up any burnt bits on the bottom of the pan (that's extra flavor!) Gently fold in the cooked bacon and shredded cheddar cheese. Put into a baking dish and bake uncovered at 350 degrees F until bubbly; that should take about 30 minutes. Gently fold in the fresh chives just before serving.
I usually make this decadent corn dish a day or two ahead of time but I don't actually bake it until the day I'm using it. I think it tastes better after all the flavors have had time to get to know each other a bit. You just need to bake it about 10 or 15 minutes longer if it's cold. That is another reason I like making this corn casserole for Holidays; it is nice to be able to prepare some of the food ahead of time without compromising on flavor or quality.
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