We're kernel sized today as we dump, stir and see what happens while eating handfuls of pudding. This delicious hoppy glop happy glap spoon bread helps us through revelations of chili orphans, casserole debates and vowel confusion. All hail the Starchy Binder!
Preppy Kitchen recipe
Molly's Now but Wow! - Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, by Claudia Rankine
Molly 0:04
I'm Matthew, and I'm Molly, and
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:06
this is spilled milk the show where we cook something delicious, eat it all, and you
Molly 0:09
can't have any today. We are talking about corn pudding, or, as some call it, corn pudding, or pudding corn or hoppy glop or spoon bread.
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:20
Okay, I saw this on the agenda, and I absolutely don't know whether hoppy glop is a joke that you slipped
Molly 0:26
in or did not slip it in. It's in Wikipedia. Wow. Okay, glop. Okay, we're talking this is our hoppy glop
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:32
episode. What does hoppy mean in this context? Does it mean? Well, does this have
Molly 0:36
something to do with like, hoppin john, although that's a, isn't that a split pee thing or like, a Black Eyed Pea. Black Eyed Pea. Yeah, that's what I meant. Yeah. I don't know whatever hoppy glop.
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:46
So why are we talking about corn pudding? Because we ate it with the Texas chili that we talked about last week. It was served in Austin. That's also my memory lane. I was like, I want to make you Texas chili with corn pudding. And I want to get two episodes out of it, yeah. So yeah, here we are.
Molly 1:04
Here we are. And I am delighted that you wanted to do this episode, because corn pudding. So as a kid, my texture aversions were much wider than they are now, sure, but one of the things I was really skeeved out by was pudding in general. Like, I don't think I've ever eaten vanilla pudding or banana pudding? Oh, I finally got okay with chocolate pudding a little we
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:24
did a chocolate pudding episode right in life where I think, I think I was the episode where I made the the shocking claim that I think chocolate pudding may be better than ice cream. Oh, that is shocking, isn't it? I guess I've blocked it. I don't know if I believe that, but I said it again. Well,
Molly 1:39
as an adult and as a young adult, I became very enamored with the word pudding, because it is one No, but it's one of those words that like it feels so nice to say. It's so evocative of, like a comforting feeling,
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:55
yeah, no, to join you for a moment on putting a verse Memory Lane, I do remember thinking as a kid, like rice pudding. How can that be real? Why does this exist? Yeah, and like, now, I think it's it's tasty. I
Molly 2:05
think it's tasty too. But all this to say corn pudding, the idea of taking this thing that I can already sort of almost imagine, the flavor of from eating cornbread, or even just the sweetness of corn on the cob. Corn Pudding, to me, is like an almost perfect phrase in a sense that it evokes such warm feelings.
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:29
I think I forgot to put this on the agenda. But there is this, I don't think it was a very successful show, TV show called schmidga dune that was on Apple TV, plus that was like a parody of Broadway musicals, and it starred Keegan, Michael Key and Cecily Strong from SNL. Okay, they're in one in one episode. There's a song called corn pudding, where that basically just consists of people saying corn pudding a lot, which
Molly 2:56
is the best thing you can possibly say. So this is our corn pudding word appreciation episode.
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:02
Oh, what's that? Mr. Etymology is here. Oh,
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:11
no, actually, he's not. We know you said word appreciation and that calls that calls up Mr. Etymology. Oh,
Molly 3:16
that's how we get him here. Yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:22
it it's me, come in. I don't have any information about the Okay, actually, here, here's, I can tell you about the etymology of corn pudding. It comes from the word corn, the word pudding, All right, bye,
Molly 3:40
bye. Mr. Etymology. Oh, that was good. That's good. Okay, so, all right, I did the research for this one. The Wikipedia entry was so brief, huh? As you will see, I had to go outside of Wikipedia to get information. Yeah, shocking. So as we mentioned, corn pudding, also called pudding. Corn Pudding, corn hoppy glop or spoon bread. It's a savory side dish, so it's not a dessert, despite the word pudding. And it's sort of like a savory custard that's crossed with a creamed corn, yeah, or kind of like a very custardy corn bread, yeah?
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:19
I think of it more like a custardy cornbread. That's kind of how it how I experienced
Molly 4:24
it. Yeah, it is a typical food of the American South, particularly Appalachia. And I would just like to say right out here that neither of us is an expert on Southern American
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:34
cooking. No, no. We established last week we were experts on Texas chili. Oh, that's
Molly 4:38
right. Okay, it's Southern American. That's not right, cooking of the American South. Yeah, there we go. So outside of Wikipedia, I found this website called taste of home, which you may be familiar
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:49
with. I am familiar with taste of home. That's right. Very successful. I assume the magazine is still, as far as magazines go, pretty successful.
Molly 4:56
I think so too. Wasn't it always the most successful of the list? Cooks illustrated long time things, yeah, okay, well, so according to taste of home, what we call corn pudding is a sort of hybrid, historically. So it's a cross between a dish that was typical among indigenous Americans, okay, corn meal pudding that makes sense made it's kind of that crossed with like, a European style custard made with milk and eggs, all right, yeah, I get it. The thing we're calling corn pudding is made from corn kernels, and these might be fresh or canned or frozen, yep, and cornmeal, so that would be dried ground corn. Often, when you see recipes, they call for cornbread mix, actually, and that's what I did today. Yeah. That is, like, very common. So pretty much every recipe for corn pudding is gonna have corn kernels in some preparation and like a cornbread mix, yeah, and then it's thickened with eggs and dairy, usually milk, sometimes sour cream. The taste of home recipe uses sour cream. I also use sour cream. Other ingredients, none of these will be surprising. Are butter, a little bit of sugar, because, like, a lot of like, like, Southern cornbread, this stuff's gonna be a little
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:10
sweet. Yeah, I didn't add any sugar, but there is sugar in the cornbread mix.
Molly 6:15
Yes. Okay. Often recipes also call for creamed corn, like hand creamed corn and sometimes corn starch for thickening. I saw a number of recipes that called for that, but I don't know why you'd need that if you've got eggs.
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:30
I'm only saying hmm, not because I'm skeptical of corn starch because, but because I'm wondering, what other things could you grab from the grocery store shelves that have corn in the name and throw them in? What about corn chips? Oh, sounds great. What about corn syrup? Oh, yummy. What about corn popcorn? Popcorn? Yeah,
Molly 6:50
okay, I'm gonna keep going here. So basically, it has really similar ingredients to cornbread, but it bakes to a soft texture that you would eat with a fork or a spoon rather than pick up and eat, you know, with by biting into it. I mean, you
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:04
could pick it up if you want to. That's true, just like you'll have, like, a handful of pudding. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, just a handful of pudding helps the what, what does it what does a handful of putting help with helps pretty much everything.
Molly 7:17
Yeah, who doesn't find a little I get a little help from my my handful of pudding.
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:23
Yeah. So I keep, I keep a handful of pudding in my pocket at all times, I kept
Molly 7:28
seeing that the internet was referring to corn pudding or spoon bread as a casserole, and even put it on there, this made me realize that I kind of didn't know how to define casserole. It's like, it's like pornography. You know it when you see it, right? You know? So I googled, literally, the phrase, what makes something a casserole? And would you like to share with us? Okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:50
it's a dish containing a variety of ingredients and a starchy binder baked in an oven, safe dish, a starchy binder, like a, like a three ring binder, that's right. It's typically served directly from the baking dish, which can itself be called a casserole. Casseroles can be elegant, but they're more often considered comfort food, a hearty, one dish meal that can be reheated. And boy, does this stuff reheat. Well, yeah, it's kind of better reheated, yeah, okay.
Molly 8:15
Was this reheated? Okay? Do you ever make casseroles other than corn pudding?
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:20
So I would say definitely enchiladas are a casserole. I mean, I think I'm gonna make the case
Molly 8:26
if we're going with a variety of ingredients and a starchy binder, oven safe dish served directly from the dish. I'm
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:32
not sure if, like, tortillas constitute a starchy binder, exactly, but, but
Molly 8:37
they do bind the ingredients into individual packets, right? Okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:40
so, yeah. So it's a packet style casserole. Other than that, there's this dish called California casserole that I'm sure was started as, like a back of the box recipe, but as, like a Burton family recipe that we used to make a lot at don't anymore, and I don't have a real reason why you've
Molly 8:55
talked about this before. Would you have talked about it in our, like Doria episode?
Matthew Amster-Burton 9:00
Maybe that's an interesting question. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Will you explain what it is Doria is like, it's a, it's a rice casserole. It's a, it's a Japanese it's an allegedly Italian dish, but is actually like a, like a Japanese idea of of an Italian dish, and it's so it's like rice baked with, like, cheese, meat sauce, and often seafood, delicious. Not seafood and meat sauce, but, like, it can have a variety of toppings, but it's like a cheesy, saucy rice casserole. Is really delicious.
Molly 9:32
You know? It's interesting. So I'm thinking about the chili episode that we did last week. Similar to chili, I did not grow up in a family actually, let me, let me phrase that you didn't where you were in office, not like chili. No, similar to chili, I see like I am equating myself to the chili. Oh, okay, which is not what I meant to do
Matthew Amster-Burton 9:53
grammatically. Okay, so, so you're a, you're some sort of chili orphan, is what you're saying.
Molly 9:59
No. So my family was not a big chili family, and we were also not a casserole family. And some of this was pure snobbery, yeah, on my parents part, some of it, I think, is the parts of the country they came from. So my dad grew up in Toronto, Canada, yeah, as the older parts of the country, as the child of Polish immigrants. So this makes sense to me why he wouldn't have been eating a lot of chili, and also, I don't know, maybe not a lot of casseroles, either. Did he? But did he a lot of Polish dogs? No, he was really into bialys. Okay? My mom grew up in Baltimore, and, like, ate a lot of Baltimore stuff, like blue crab and blue crab. Shad row, Shadow, other Baltimore things, yeah, crab cakes,
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:48
stuff, other Baltimore stuff. Like,
Molly 10:50
although my mother, hold on, my
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:53
mother lane is cohering in your mind, yeah. Before
Molly 10:57
I was old enough to remember, my mom used to make something that she called funeral casserole, wow, that she would take to people's houses after somebody had died, because it was just delicious and comforting. Okay, so what was in it? I think it involved canned macaroni and cheese and also, wow, some I think it had like the French's fried onions, of course. But all this to say, I did not grow up with casserole. I didn't either. So now I think I struggle to even, as you can see, I struggled to define casserole I as an adult. Wow, if somebody makes me a tuna noodle casserole, I am all up in that. Yeah, it's not for me. Oh, I love that stuff.
Molly 11:42
I don't know that I make anything else that qualifies as a casserole. Yeah, we're talking about various ingredients with a starchy binder,
Matthew Amster-Burton 11:50
like, is a is a gratin, a casserole. Maybe, maybe because, like, there's this winter greens gratin recipe that I love that from, from fine cooking magazine, well, and it's got a custard, right? It doesn't have, it doesn't have egg or any any thickener other than, like reduced cream, okay, but so it's almost a custard. I'm
Molly 12:14
also thinking of Deb Perelman recipe. Deb Perelman, of smitten kitchen, her recipe for pizza Beans. Oh sure, yeah, which? I can't remember which of her cookbooks it's from, but it's basically like, you make a nice, like, saucy white bean thing with vegetables, and you put cheese over it, and you bake it and you serve it out of the thing. But it sounds like a casserole, casserole. I don't
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:36
know. Did we? Did we try and do a casserole episode? I don't think so. I
Molly 12:39
don't know. Who knows anyway, corn pudding is a traditional Thanksgiving food, or, as we call it, Halloween, that's right, Matthew, will you talk about the one that you made for today? Because I would definitely make
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:52
that again. Yeah. Okay, this is so easy. This is, like, you know, it's really it's as easy as a back of the box recipe. I don't know if it came from the back of a box. I got it from the preppy kitchen blog, which I think is also is that where your tiramisu is
Molly 13:05
from? So the first tiramisu I ever made was from there. I now make a version of Renee Erickson's tiramisu from her sunlight and breadcrumbs cookbook.
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:14
Okay, so this is you just mix all this stuff together. There's no like, like. I do enjoy a recipe where you literally just mix all the ingredients together. And that that, I think, is like a hallmark of like a true casserole. Can of whole kernel corn, drained can of cream corn, cup of sour cream, box of Jiffy corn, muffin mix salt and pepper, a couple of chopped jalapenos, stick and a half of melted butter, two eggs, and he calls for Parmigiano Reggiano. I used white cheddar just because I it seemed right. I'm sure, I'm sure it's good with parmigiano also, but I want a little cheddar in there.
Molly 13:49
And the jalapenos were perfect because, you know, they're not that spicy, but the flavor is so right with corn, yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:56
and, like, it's and then it bakes for, like, you know this, there's a lot of liquid in there. It bakes for 80 minutes, whoa, and it gets nicely browned on top, and it smells really good while it's baking. Yeah. How do you know when it's done? I mean, it's gonna be done after 80 minutes, like, you could take its temperature and make sure that it's at least, like 175
Speaker 1 14:16
or whatever, or use a toothpick to poke it, but after 80 minutes in the oven, it's gonna be done. Yeah, it's a beautiful shade of golden on top, yeah, and it spoons out really nicely. It's a really tasty
Molly 14:27
dish. I was gonna say, do you expect like or like when you had corn pudding in Austin? Yeah, was it cut into squares? Was it like a big chafing dish that you would scoop a spoonful
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:38
out of the ladder? Yeah, it was. There was a lot of chafing in Austin. You know
Molly 14:42
when, when I, when I was doing the research for this, every single corn pudding recipe I found, or maybe, like, nine out of 10 of them, the photo accompanying it was of a square, yes, that also which I was fascinated by. I was like, Wait a minute. I mean, I
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:00
think, like, if it's cooled enough, I think I could cut a square of that, but it doesn't seem like the right way to do
Molly 15:06
it. No, I love, there's something about like, taking a scoop of it, yeah, that then invites you to sort of see it as this, like, pudding special thing,
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:16
yeah, when we, when we had it with chili last time, like, I, like, just threw some in my bowl with the chili, and, like, got them in the same bite. I love that. So it gets a little bit crispy around the edges, not super crispy, but, like, enough.
Molly 15:31
Yeah. Well, if you have never had corn pudding, maybe, maybe you live outside the states and you've never considered a corn pudding, highly recommend. And we'll, we'll link to this recipe in the show
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:41
notes, yeah, and I like, it's just, it's fun to glop a bunch of things together. It's a hoppy glop. It's like the opposite
Molly 15:48
of your purest chili recipe that you were talking about in last week's episode, right?
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:53
Maybe hoppy is, is, is just a way of pronouncing happy, yeah. Happy glap. Happy glap. Yeah.
Molly 16:02
I All right, Matthew, do we have any spilled mail today? We do. This
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:12
comes from listener Ingrid who writes, hello, Matthew and Molly, lawyer, lawyer. Listener, wow. We do like we do have a lot of lawyer listeners. And believe me, they have some emotions. Loyal listener Ingrid from Winnipeg here, it's been a long time since I've written, but rest assured, I'm still listening faithfully. I listen and re listen to your podcasts at various times of day or night, as well as just recently from a canton in Switzerland and a castle in Italy. Yes, now I feel like if listener Ingrid gets up in a tree and listens to our show, she will have completed the trifecta. That's the spilled milk equivalent of the EGOT. Oh yeah, it's the tree. Or I was gonna say the Triple Crown, the Triple Crown, yeah, it's, it's the Canton tree castle, the CTC, yeah, that doesn't have a ring to it. Okay, we need, we need someplace to listen to. Well, we're asking on a ship, but that's still a lot of consonants. We need a cool place to listen to the show that starts with a vowel, so we can make an EGOT type of thing out of it. Okay? Listeners let us know, yeah. Like, okay, but also, like, we should be thinking like, where's a cool place that starts with a vowel.
Molly 17:20
Okay, all right, does y count a yurt?
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:24
Yeah, sure. Igloo, igloo, yes, yes. Okay, if somebody
Molly 17:27
has listened to our show in an igloo, I will be beside myself. That would
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:32
be wonderful. Okay, question for you, Matthew, now that a cots D is not living with you, has your cooking changed? Do you cook more less in a different way? I lost my interest in cooking for fun when it had to compete with my work obligations and my son's sports and music lessons. But now that I'm retired, I've slowly become much more interested in cooking, recipe books and other food related topics. Again, listening to food podcasts definitely helps too. Thanks for a great podcast. Ll Ingrid, all right, this question is for me, so I would say I cook at home about the same amount, and mostly what has changed is that I'm less likely to make things that are, you know, you know how, like, if there are more than two people in your family, there are going to be some things that are, like, a favorite of a subset of your family members, right? Yeah. So, like, there are some things that that were like a Matthew in December favorites, like, like, things with tofu or shrimp, especially, which are not among Watson's favorite things. And then some things that were, like Watson and Matthew favorite things, like things with lots of asparagus or mushrooms in them. And so I make a lot more asparagus and mushroom things, especially like asparagus. Season ended recently, and I cooked a lot of asparagus during that time, I still stir fry a lot. I still make pizza often. Pasta is not a favorite of a cots D, and they know that this is weird, so I make pasta more often, like recently, recently, like two nights in a row, I made a pasta shape with some asparagus that I just boiled in with the pasta, like, cut it to short lengths and boiled with the pasta, and then, like, butter and olive oil. Like, I think I used some pancetta one night. Really good. Ah, yum. Frozen pizza, I would say we have more often, because, like, a one frozen pizza is perfect for two people and not enough for three people, typically. So I have one in that, like, there was an impulse buy that I have in the fridge right now that's something like a DiGiorno, like, like, mega topped all the way to the edge, super thin and crispy. Like, it used a lot of superlatives, and I had to buy it. Okay,
Molly 19:29
I can't wait to hear about it. What a great question. I love that. Thanks. Ingrid Molly, do you have a now? But wow, I sure do you?
Molly 19:43
This is one of those now, but wow, this just kind of a bit of a necessary bummer. Okay, okay, this is a book called Don't let me be lonely by Claudia Rankine, who is a black American poet. She's maybe best known for her book citizen, which came out in 24 14 and was a National Book Award finalist. This book, don't let me be lonely, came out in 2004 and it's the first of a trilogy that includes citizen. So if you maybe read citizen, go back and check this one out. I was introduced to it by a student of mine. She requested that we read it together in this group that I run with her, and it is an incredible piece of art. It is an epic poem in collage form. So what does that mean? Epic poem meaning it is a long poem with lots of different segments about the collage part. But, but yes, oh, the collage. Okay, here we go. So let me explain to you the collage. It has within it things that look like poems, like in the sense of being verse. It has prose. It also has visual elements, photographs, stills from movies, kind of a like a chart, like a photocopy of a pill bottle label. It's an engagement with the idea of what media does to us in contemporary America. Specifically, it's a really challenging read. It's kind of breaking my brain, but it's been worth it because of the way that it examines over the course of all these different approaches within this one book, it forces me to think about race and violence and media and the ways that we do and don't process what it means to be alive in America today. So really heavy stuff, but truly art. Yeah, the kind of thing that you can really chew on for a while. So that's Claudia Rankin's, don't let me be lonely. It's worth, worth the
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:50
challenge. Thank you, Molly and oh, wow, that's the end of the show. All right. This is a short and sweet episode. It's a little bite size, like, you know when they say, Don't bite off more than you can chew. They're talking about this episode. That's right, it's a corn kernel sized episode. It's a kernel sized episode. I'm, yeah, I'm Colonel Sanders. Sanders. Our producer is avicatella Molly's got a newsletter called I've got a feeling that I strongly recommend that you check out. It@mollyweisenberg.substack.com's
Molly 22:18
Matthew makes music. His band is called early to the airport, and they have an EP, or is it an LP? It's an LP, an LP that came out in early June. I listened to it, and after only one Listen, got a bunch of songs stuck in my head, and I'm still thinking, thank
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:35
you. Yeah, now I'm resting on my laurels, which is the best part of any artistic endeavor. That's
Molly 22:40
right. So anyway, yeah, go look for early to the airport anywhere you listen to music, Spotify, band camp, etc,
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:45
yeah. And you can check in with other spilled milk listeners at reddit.com/r/everything, spilled milk like you can just like, hang out and get Hoppy, Hoppy, hoppy together. And until next time, thank you for listening to spilled Belk, the show that I'm still trying to think of a place that starts with a vowel, that the show you can listen to in an archipelago, Oh, what about an isthmus you can listen on an archipelago? An isthmus, an Oh,
Molly 23:18
O'Reilly
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:22
auto, Riley auto, parts store. What are some other vowels at a U, underground lair, I feel like we left one out o, e and estate, a grand estate, that's right, and I'll be hanging out with you in all of those places. I'm Matthew Amster Burton,
Molly 23:39
and I'm happy Clap.
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:47
I'm Matthew. There's a little Gorn kernel in my throat. Okay? I.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai