4-Cheese Cornmeal Casserole

I know it’s been quite a long time since I last posted. Spring for our family can be quite busy. School and weeding take up a lot of our time. We are trying to weed our whole garden and we are thinking about planting another vegetable garden this year. We’ll see how it goes.

Last Sunday my family and I enjoyed a delicious 4-cheese cornmeal casserole. So I’m going to show you how to make it so that you and your family can enjoy it someday. 🙂

Start by grating your 4 cheeses: Cheddar cheese; Swiss cheese; Monetary Jack cheese; and 4-year-old cheese (and yes I said 4-year-old cheese  🙂 )

Make a batch of cornmeal porridge (recipe below) and spread half of it in a 9×13 in.  baking pan.  Spread all the grated cheese over the surface. Pour the other half of the cornmeal porridge over the cheese and spread it around. Place your pan in a preheated oven (at 350 degrees) for 10-15 min.

It should kinda look like this. The cheese should be melted in the middle and the sides just beginning to get crusty. Yum!

We enjoyed it with some omelette over the casserole, sausages and pickles.

And to top off the delicious meal we had some vanilla ice cream with  mashed up frozen  berries

 Next week we’re going to have some guests and I’ll have more recipes to post so stay tuned…

Jessica 

Cornmeal Porridge Recipe:

Ingredients:

3 cups water

1/2 cup cornmeal

1/4 tsp. salt

Preparation Instructions:

Bring water to a boil. Add salt and then pour the cornmeal little by little while stirring continually. Let it simmer for about 10 to 15 minutes, mixing it often. You don’t want it to stick to the bottom. The polenta shouldn’t be too runny or too hard. When it’s just in between, then that’s when it’s done right. Serve warm and enjoy!

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Recipe: No knead bread

So as promised, here is the recipe for this delightful bread. Note, I got the recipe from this blog. So I did not write all the instructions out, the author of that blog did. Enjoy!

Photo copyright © Jessica the Baker.

 

no knead bread

3 cups of bread flour
1/4 tsp yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 2/3 cups luke-warm tap water

Whisk together the dry ingredients. Add the water and stir until well mixed. Your dough will be VERY wet. Don’t stress. It’s supposed to be that way. Work the dough well to ensure that all the flour is absorbed. Chunks of raw flour in the middle of your bread are unsightly and gross.

Cover the dough with well greased plastic wrap. If your house is cold like mine, you can microwave a glass of water until it’s very hot and then put the bread in the microwave overnight. The heat from the steam will keep the microwave warmer than the ambient air. If your house is 70 degrees or more, just leave it on the counter and it will be fine. Let sit for 12-18 hours. (I have found 18 hours to be a little too long – I always aim for closer to 12 hours). Your dough should have risen substantially and be very bubbly.

Pour your dough out on a floured cutting board and fold in on itself a few times so that it’s less of a blob and more of a ball. Since the dough is so wet, I just use a rubber spatula to lift one edge and flop it into the center. Then I do the same in a circular motion.

Cover with a clean towel and let sit for 1 hour. The dough will probably flatten back out. Again, no stress folks. Remember – four year olds can make this!

After an hour, preheat your oven to 450 WITH THE POT INSIDE! That’s important enough to warrant all caps.  Once it’s preheated, let your pot sit in there for another half hour. You want the pot to be so very hot that the dough will cook instantly when it touches the pot. Otherwise, the dough will stick to the pot and you’ll never get your loaf out in one piece. Been there, done that, and it’s not pretty. Very, very hot is the goal.

Working quickly, pull your pan out of the oven, sprinkle some flour on the bottom, and dump your wet dough into the pan. It’ll look ugly. That’s okay. Put the lid on it and put it back in the oven. Cook for 20 minutes. Remove lid, raise the oven temperature to 500, and cook for 20 more minutes or until dark golden brown.

Remove from oven and immediately remove bread from the pan. Let sit on a wire rack until cool.