Down-Gnome Cooking: Stuffed Cornbread Loaves

This is another recipe that I conjured up looking for something that I could easily pack for work and would be able to enjoy at or near it's full potential after a quick nuking. This one is a quick adaptation of Emeril Lagasse's stuffed cornbread recipe utilizing a few ingredients I had available at the time, as well as a few optional tweaks that I found round out the flavor and make it a bit more of a meal-type dish.



Stuffed Cornbread Loaves:

Filling:
- Half a pound of ground pork sausage
- Cheese
- 1/2 cup Diced, sauteed onion (cook as well as you like)
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed & minced fine
-1 can of corn kernels, drained well
(cook corn in sausage fat 5 min)
-1 cup Cream
1 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp Salt
Small splash of beer or half water-half bourbon (max 1/4 cup)
1 3/4 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese

Batter:
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar (optional)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
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2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
3 tablespoons melted unsalted butter


In a medium saucepan or large skillet brown sausage and remove from heat. Leave fat in pan and remove meat to a bowl and reserve. In the fat saute your diced onion and the corn until tender (you may need to start the onion a little bit ahead of the corn). Add garlic and cook 1 more minute. Add remaining ingredients and cook until thickened. Once done remove to the same bowl as the meat and mash slightly with a potato masher, just to break up a few of the corn kernels. Reserve.

Place the dry and wet ingredients for the batter into two separate bowls, then combine. You don't need to be too gentle with this as there isn't too much flour to produce gluten, so don't be afraid to give it a really good stir to make sure everything is incorporated.

Grease 3-4 small bread pans and layer 1/4 to 1/3 of the way up the sides with batter, then add 3-4 heaping spoonfuls of filling, making sure to have at least a 1/4 inch margin on all sides, then cover with more batter. Pan should have at least 1/4 inch space at the end to ensure it rises properly once in the oven.

Bake @375 until set, approx 30-35 mins.

Once removed from oven you can cool and untin immediately or wrap in plastic and refrigerate for later. Because the filling is precooked and completely sealed these loaves will keep a long time. Serve as is or with country gravy.