Hominy, Mushroom, and Cheddar Casserole

Ever since the original settlers of Jamestown, Virginia, were greeted by Indians in 1607 with bowls of softened maize with salt and hog fat (“rockahomini”), there’s been confusion even in the South over the difference between hominy and grits. In short, hominy is whole, dried corn kernels soaked in water and lye to remove the outer hulls; dry and grind hominy, and you have grits (or, in Charleston, South Carolina, “hominy grits”). The only old-fashioned hominy I’ve encountered was made by a