This week's recipe for Baked Sunday Mornings is a bit of a departure: Baked Cheese Grits. I never ate grits while growing up in Nebraska, and while I've eaten them occasionally in restaurants as an adult, I've never actually made grits myself. In fact, when I think of grits, the first thing that comes to mind is one of my favorite movies, My Cousin Vinny (I think that lawyers tend to find this movie particularly funny). Grits come up a few times in the movie, and the fact that "it takes the entire grit-eating world 20 minutes" to cook grits is an important plot point.
Anyway, while this recipe isn't terribly quick (even longer than the 20 minutes prescribed by Vinny Gambini), it is easy. You cook one part grits (I used Bob's Red Mill corn grits) to two parts milk and two parts water, along with salt and pepper, for about 35-45 minutes, stirring for most of the time. The recipe says that the grits will become "really thick," and mine were -- if I turned a spoonful of grits upside down, the grits stayed put. After cooking the grits, you stir in a bit of butter and some shredded cheese (cheddar and Monterey Jack), pour the grits into a pan, top them with more cheese, put the pan under the broiler briefly, and serve immediately.
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Instead of putting the grits and cheese into a 10-inch skillet as suggested, I parceled out the grits into individual servings using All-Clad 16 oz. ramekins. The grits were quite shallow in each dish, about half an inch high, and firm enough that I could have sliced them into discrete pieces that would have kept their shape. Although firm, the texture was smooth and creamy, and the flavor was terrific -- the grits were very cheesy, and the browned cheese on top was particularly delicious.
While the grits were tasty, the cheese made them quite rich, and I couldn't each very much in one sitting. And while they weren't difficult to make, the effort required to stand over the stove continually stirring grits isn't trivial (surely someone has written a country music song about this chore?). I'm glad the Baked boys stuck a savory recipe into the cookbook, but I'm going to stick to the sweet stuff.
Recipe: "Baked Cheese Grits" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.
Anyway, while this recipe isn't terribly quick (even longer than the 20 minutes prescribed by Vinny Gambini), it is easy. You cook one part grits (I used Bob's Red Mill corn grits) to two parts milk and two parts water, along with salt and pepper, for about 35-45 minutes, stirring for most of the time. The recipe says that the grits will become "really thick," and mine were -- if I turned a spoonful of grits upside down, the grits stayed put. After cooking the grits, you stir in a bit of butter and some shredded cheese (cheddar and Monterey Jack), pour the grits into a pan, top them with more cheese, put the pan under the broiler briefly, and serve immediately.
.JPG)
While the grits were tasty, the cheese made them quite rich, and I couldn't each very much in one sitting. And while they weren't difficult to make, the effort required to stand over the stove continually stirring grits isn't trivial (surely someone has written a country music song about this chore?). I'm glad the Baked boys stuck a savory recipe into the cookbook, but I'm going to stick to the sweet stuff.
Recipe: "Baked Cheese Grits" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.
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