Ho ho ho for hominy

I want to share with you a recipe that is different and a good last-minute one for the holidays. It goes with everything from turkey to barbecue, it is quick and easy to make, cheap, and sticks to your ribs without too big a caloric hit. Everywhere I take it, including a party we went to last night, people love it.

I wish it was my recipe. But it's not. It is "Jessica's Favorite Green Chile Hominy Casserole," from Tom Perini's cookbook, "Texas Cowboy Cooking," available at the Perini Ranch Steakhouse website. Tom and I were high school classmates in Abilene, and he is now nationally famous for his "Cowboy Cooking" catering business.

I just call it "Hominy Casserole." This is the recipe in the cookbook, with a couple of local wrinkles thrown in (all recipes are only a starting place for what you do with it). It serves 10 ordinary people, and six who have had Hominy Casserole before.

1 cup chopped onion
four 15-ounce cans hominy (two yellow, two white)
½ cup hominy liquid
1 tablespoon liquid from a jar of pickled jalapenos
1/4 pound cheddar cheese, grated
10 slices bacon
1 cup diced green chiles (such as Ortega)

Fry the bacon until crisp and drain on paper towels.
In a little of the bacon fat, sauté the onion until soft.
Drain the hominy, saving half a cup of liquid. Dump the hominy in with the onions and heat, stirring regularly, until the hominy is heated through.
Add the hominy liquid and the jalapeno liquid. Stir over medium heat to reduce the liquids. Add the cheese and stir until it melts. Add the green chiles. Crumble the crisp bacon into the mix. Stir until blended.

It is ready to serve at this point. Or you can make it in advance and refrigerate it, even freeze it. This is what makes it so easy at holiday season. When you're ready to eat, you can sprinkle more cheese and bacon over the top, or not. (I only use ¼-pound of cheese, and the recipe calls for half a cup.) Bake it in a 325 oven for 15 minutes, or 40 minutes if it has been refrigerated.

Hominy Casserole is the kind of thing, if there are any leftovers, that you will wake up in the middle of the night and take out of the icebox and eat cold. In fact it is better to make sure you prepare a bigger batch than the people at your table can possibly eat, no matter how hard they try.