Green Chili & Goat Cheese Skillet Cornbread

Veggies:
_ 3 ears corn, husked, roasted
_ 1/2 cup chopped onion
_ 1½ cup roasted, peeled, chopped Hatch green chilies or poblanos
(about 3 large poblanos or about 5-6 large Hatch/anaheims).
Dry stuff:
_ 1¼ cups yellow cornmeal
_ 1 teaspoon salt
_ 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Wet stuff (let come to room temp before mixing with the dry stuff):
_ 2 jumbo eggs, beaten
_ 2/3 cup crema mexicana (Mexican sour cream)
_ 1/4 cup water
_ 1/3 cup bacon fat, melted

Protein:
_ 8 ounces goat cheese (chèvre), cubed or crumbled
_ 5 oz precooked patty sausage, cubed or crumbled
_ 6 slices of crispy bacon, crumbled
(option: leave out the sausage and increase the cheese to 12 or 14 oz)

Directions

1. * Roast the chilies over open flame till the skins blacken and blister. (The idea is to blacken/blister the
skins without cooking the rest of the flesh much at all.) Place in Tupperware bowl, close tightly and let
them steam themselves for 15 minutes or so. Then remove skins by rubbing them with your fingers or
a veggie brush under running water. Chop the chilies and set aside.
2. * Roast the corn over open flame until slightly charred black in some areas and has good color. Cut the
kernels off the cobs with a knife and set aside.
3. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F while getting all other ingredients ready.
4. Add a small amount (2 to 3 tblspns) of bacon fat to a 11-inch cast iron skillet** and put it in the oven
(2nd rack from top) to heat up.
5. Reserve 1/8 cup corn meal.
6. Mix the remaining dry ingredients in a medium bowl
7. When the skillet and oil are hot, remove the skillet from the oven and sprinkle the bottom with the
reserved 1/8 cup of cornmeal. Stir it into the hot oil to make a roux (there should not be enough oil for
the corn meal and oil to move around freely – just enough to make sure the cornmeal is all “wet” but
not runny. It should seem like there is not quite enough bacon fat for the cornmeal – very slightly
clumpy.)
 8. Return the skillet to the oven to brown the roux (after heating a while the contents will loosen up and
spread out nicely - no further stirring is needed).
9. Add the remaining wet stuff (eggs, crema mexicana, water and remaining bacon fat) to the bowl of dry
ingredients and mix to form batter.
10. Add the veggies (corn, chiles, onions) to the batter and mix,
11. When the cornmeal roux is nice and brown, remove the skillet from the oven and pour in half of the
batter. It should sizzle a little in the hot bacon fat.
12. Sprinkle the goat cheese, sausage and bacon evenly across the top of this layer of batter.
13. Gently pour in the remaining batter, being careful not to upset the layers, and bake until the top is
golden brown, about 45 to 50 minutes.
14. Remove skillet from the oven and let cool 15 minutes before serving
Notes and Experience:
 For roasting the chilies and corn you can use charcoal grill, gas grill, gas stove burners, blowtorch, etc.
I prefer a propane blowtorch as it is very fast with little fuss, mess or wasted fuel – plus you can get the
entire piece uniformly blackened (and blistered in the case of the chilies).
 **Skillets (cast iron or otherwise) are measured at rim, not the bottom – it makes a difference for this
recipe. My 11” Martin cast iron skillet is 11” outside diameter at the top rim, 8.5” inside bottom
diameter, and 8” contact area on the outside bottom. It’s 3” deep but 2” would do.

 Made 10/20/2009: I think a slightly looser consistency is needed to do this right. I used too much of the
bacon fat in the pan to start. Used poblanos and Oaxaca cheese instead of goat chese cuz that’s what
they had at HEB. Made a few changes to the recipe.

 Made 10/21/09: Used real goat cheese, poblanos. Overall, MUCH better. Next time I’ll include maybe
a seeded jalapeno or serrano pepper.

Other tweaks I’m gonna throw at this:

 Adding a bit of all-purpose flour to mix (and tweak the liquid and salt and baking soda accordingly).
 Add more onions.
 Using stone-ground cornmeal.
 Adding a bit of honey.

Origin (how we came across this recipe):

Started from Outlaw Chef’s Rio Grande Cornbread recipe on Guy’s Big Bite but quickly started tweaking it
more to my liking. Here’s the food network link:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/guy-fieri/heres-the-outlaw-chefs-rio-grande-cornbread-recipe/index.html.