Geen Chile Corn Bread

My mother has a cast iron corn bread pan that produces sticks of cornbread in the shape of little corn on the cobs. I always loved it because the portions were perfect and the shape made it easy to dip in soup, chili or simply pick up and eat. Mom, I know you are reading this and I'm claiming that when you pass. I doubt I have to fight Brad for it, but just in case let it be known I called it first. The minks, the jewelry and your cast iron corn bread pan is mine.


When I went to college the only cornbread I made was the instant Jiffy cornbread that I mixed and dumped in cupcake tins. Those still work fine too. But when I moved to Austin and visited Z’Tejas - lord have mercy they serve some good cornbread. It comes to your table after you order the meal, like when chips and salsa arrives at a mexican restaurant. This cornbread at Z'Tejas comes in a small six inch cast iron skillet - hot - as in, just out of the oven. You put a little pat of butter on your slice and it melts right in. It's so good. If allowed I would eat the entire skillet of cornbread and be full before my meal arrived. Of course, that IS what happens when we eat at a mexican restaurant. Back to the cornbread!

I actually came across the exact Z'Tejas cornbread recipe from Slightly Cheaper Than Therapy who is from Austin also. She actually attended a cooking class by Jack Gilmore, owner and executive chef of Z’Tejas. I'm so completely jealous, but I'm working on getting over it. I read her post and thought how absolutely wonderful this cornbread would be with the taco soup.

And like I always do, I started looking up other cornbread recipes to compare ingredients, ratios and cooking methods and found some other really good ideas. Simply Recipes has a great Green Chile Cornbread Recipe that I liked because it used green chiles and also cheese. I of course had to check Ina's web site also and found a Jalapeno Cheddar Cornbread recipe from her that appealed to me because it called for scallions, jalapenos and cheddar cheese.

Knowing that Z'Tejas already had a winning recipe I knew that I didn't want to stray too much. But it did seem like my recurring theme for the Fall Football Party food was "spice" so I made some very slight adjustments. Here is the original recipe with my edits in parenthesis.

1 1/2 cups of Lamb’s Corn Meal. This is a Texas brand, I'm sure what you find at your grocery store would be fine too.
1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
1/3 cup plus 1 Tablespoon of sugar
1 Tablespoon of baking powder
1 Tablespoon of baking soda
1 cup of plain, nonfat yogurt
1/3 cup plus 1 Tablespoon of canned creamed corn
1/3 cup plus 1 Tablespoon of frozen whole kernel corn, thawed. (I used canned whole kernel corn here)
3 large eggs
1/3 cup plus 1 Tablespoon of REAL butter
1/4 teaspoon of salt


(I added one can of whole green chiles that I drained and chopped. I also added one cup of monterrey jack cheese and an additional teaspoon of salt.)


Start by mixing all your dry ingredients together: Lamb's Corn Meal, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt.

Then mix the other ingredients together: Creamed corn, yogurt, eggs, butter.

Instead of cracking eggs directly into your mixture, Ina suggest cracking them into a separate bowl first so that one bad egg doesn't spoil everything you are making. Good one Ina.

I thought the lighting on these photos were good so I put two egg photos. I did not crack six eggs, these are the same three eggs, I'm just appreciating the photography. It's a work in progress!

Here at the chiles I'm adding. Simply drain, and then slice and dice em.

One cup of monterrey jack cheese. Oh yeah!

Now mix the wet ingredients in with the dry ingredients.

Z'Tejas would have you put this into a 10" cast iron skillet. That is currently on my wish list so instead I used this pampered chef stoneware baker. I baked this at 400 for 35 minutes. If using cast iron you could probably only go for 20. Test by inserting a toothpick in the center of the cornbread and it should come out relatively clean but still a little moist.

I don't have any photos of the finished product unfortunately. I pulled this out of the oven as guests were walking in and didn't stop long enough to take photos. It WAS delicious. I would add another can of chiles and maybe one fresh chopped jalapeno to give it more zing. Not sure the cheese added that much. This is such a good recipe, you don't have to mess with it much at all. It's great as is.