What Does 'Rough Chop' Mean?

Snapshots of life as seen from the edge of your favorite knife + the last cornbread pudding recipe you'll ever need.

Rough Chop is a bi-monthly tasty and emotional freestyle. These are the golden snapshots of life, seen from the edge of your favorite knife, stories told through the lens of food and travel. Rough Chop is entirely user-supported. I offer a free subscription to all, so please subscribe and follow! If you enjoy what you’re reading, every paid subscription level contributes to sustaining this hungry writer and is greatly appreciated. Now, let's continue our adventure…

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I realize that I have not yet shared with you, dear reader, the namesake of Rough Chop. I grew up in the '90s, a golden era of cooking and travel shows, marked by the rise of the Food Network and the influence it had on households, including mine, where cooking shows were often the background noise. In my fantasy world shaped by the cooking show legends, food was considered akin to art, and watching its creation was a beautiful thing to behold. As a child, and still today, I pretend to be the star of my own cooking show during nearly every meal I make. Food-related vernacular was used as regularly as salt and pepper at dinnertime. Someone like Rachael Ray would say, “just give it a rough chop” and move right along.

So, for everyone else not in my head, who is not as accustomed to cooking jargon, please allow me to define what I think of as 'Rough Chop' and why it serves as the home for my emotional food processor of essays. To ‘chop’ something up or break it down means to deconstruct. And 'rough,' not in the physical sense, but rather in your unique, signature way, the way only you can. It’s a cook’s version of “freestyle".

The idea of this blog came to me in the place where I have most of my best ideas: in a hot shower. The shower thoughts that swim through my head are like wild fish, fluid and free, rushing like the great Pacific Northwest salmon during a run. Perhaps the thought went something like this:

How to describe what category to label these essays? It’s like trying to describe those golden snapshots of life as seen from the edge of your favorite knife. The stories of life as told through food. Everyone can cook, and if everyone did, each dish would have its own little styles unique to you — in the way you approach cooking and food, as well as your personal and family history with both. I am obsessed with those imprints of someone's life leading up to that moment. How they hold a knife when cutting a cucumber, it all tells a story of who they are, right there, in that single cut. It’s an expression of beauty to prepare food for someone or yourself in a way that only you can. The term 'rough chop' is most commonly used by home cooks and professional chefs who are feeling a little frisky, those who like to deconstruct their food in a spontaneous and wild spree. Who breaks free from technique and doesn’t give a fuck about who says two cents about it because they will eat it and they will love it because it will be fucking delicious is what. I see every onion edge as a puzzle piece to your inner core; some of us are still hanging on by our fibrous skin. I see the carrots cut in rage after an aggravating day, blocky and rigid. Feel the first long, deep inhale you’ve had all day breathing in the garlic simmering over melted butter.

Like its technique-less origin from which the name is inspired, this blog, The Rough Chop, is the sometimes messy, chaotic, emotionally charged intersections between food and life. Oh, and sometimes I share recipes from my awkwardly lit kitchen. Recipes like this one below! I thought to myself then, if I ever have a food blog, The Rough Chop is what I think my style of cooking and writing is. A tasty and emotional freestyle, breaking down life’s little moments, and honoring the influences that lead us to where we are now.

If I had to pick one dish that is peak Rough Chop, it would be what I recently made for my family Thanksgiving eat-a-thon. It’s bougie gourmet meets Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee-style flare (please youtube old episodes if you don’t know who that is). I’ve made it now for the last few years, each time making adjustments and improving from the year before. It takes inspiration by mixing together my two favorite cornbread pudding experiences: Hill Country BBQ cornbread pudding (which is actually the James Beard recipe for White Corn Pudding) and Chrissy Teigen's cheddar jalapeno cornbread pudding. Then, of course, I add my own little signatures to make it my own. This year, my 4-year-old nephew and I made it together, so it’s pretty user-friendly. And I must say, this year’s was by far the best of the years prior. The addition of the toasted butter Ritz mixed with cheddar and Jack cheese topping is what we all deserve in life, my friends. It’s the rich, buttery, golden crunch of my dreams. The love story between cheese and Ritz crackers is a tale as old as time and made for the exact right topping that both these dishes absolutely needed.

I start by writing down all the ingredients of both recipes. Then I mix and consolidate these two recipes and techniques. I add Jiffy cornbread and sour cream to give it more of a cornbready bite, but it’s basically a cornbread soufflé cooked bain-marie style, meaning cooked in a water bath. There’s not a lot of chopping, and the recipe is built from instinct.

Meryl’s Jalapeño Cheddar Cornbread Pudding Casserole Soufflé Supreme

Ingredients:

1 diced jalapeño

1 4-ounce can of diced green chiles

4 cups frozen white corn

4 tablespoons butter, melted, plus more for the pan

2 cups heavy cream

2 tablespoons cornstarch

2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

1 cup finely shredded Monterey or Pepper Jack cheese

30 oz cream-style corn

6 large eggs

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Dash cayenne

1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

2 tablespoons chopped chives

1/2 cup finely chopped shallot

1 cup sour cream

1 ½ boxes of Jiffy cornbread

Cheddar Ritz topping

2-3 tubes of Ritz, smashed

2-3 tablespoons butter

1-2 cups of shredded cheese

Make the Ritz topping:

Heat a pan over medium-low heat. Melt butter. Add smashed Ritz. Toast until golden brown. Set aside to cool. While it cools, proceed with the pudding recipe. Once the toasted Ritz is completely cooled, mix the browned Ritz with 1-2 cups shredded cheese. Taste and try not to eat the whole thing! You’ll need it for the topping :) Set aside until you’re ready to bake.

Make the Cornbread Pudding:

Preheat the oven to 350. Whisk together eggs and cream until silky smooth. Mix in sugar, sea salt, pepper, cayenne, cornstarch, and nutmeg to the cream mixture. In a separate bowl, mix together frozen corn, creamed corn, sour cream, melted butter, chives, shallots, diced jalapeños, and green chilies. Add the cream mixture to the corn mixture and mix until fully combined. Add Jiffy and mix until fully combined. Then mix in the cheese until fully incorporated.

The final batter should be runny, similar to thick custard or rice pudding. Feel free to add the rest of the Jiffy box if you want it more like cornbread. At first, I only had 1 box of Jiffy, but it felt too slack, so I added an extra half a box (to equal the 1 ½ boxes used in recipe ingredients). The extra half a box would make it slightly more cakey than soufflé-ey, so it depends on where on the spectrum you like it. The version above with 1 ½ is a solid 5 on a 1-10 scale between soufflé and cornbread to give you a scale.

Pour the batter into a buttered baking sheet. We used a 9.1" X 3.8” pan. You’ll want there to be at least 1-2 inches of space left in the pan so that she can rise when she bakes. At this point, you can either add the Ritz topping and bake it, or cover it and put it in the refrigerator until the next day when you’re ready to bake like I did! Just remember that you’ll want to add the Ritz topping just before you bake it. 

To bake, place the cornbread pudding baking dish inside a sheet pan or large roasting pan filled with boiling water.

Bake at 350 for 1 ½  hours or until set and golden on top. It should have a very slight wobble but be mostly set when it’s done. If the water completely evaporates out, refill it with boiling water. 

Thanks to the Jiffy mix, it’s sturdier than a soufflé, so it won’t experience too drastic of deflation, but I still recommend serving immediately as it will start to drop the longer it rests.

So now you know, the origin of the story of The Rough Chop blog. If you enjoy these stories and recipes, please consider subscribing liking, sharing, commenting, or bonus karma points for becoming a free or paid subscriber.

With gratitude,

Meryl