Instructions: Connoisseurs know corn bread has a shelf life just slightly longer than a souffle. Hot out of the oven, it reaches perfection in those few heartbeats between the moment you get the butter slathered on and the second it starts to fall apart as you take the first bite.

Once corn bread goes cold, its no longer fit to be bread. It never reheats well; it dries out and turns to crumbs.

Then it starts to get interesting.

Leftover corn bread is one of the great secret ingredients in summer. Even at its most forlorn, hours or a day old, it still has strong corn flavor and crunchy texture. You cant just eat it by the wedge. You have to crush it into crumbs and make it into a topping for baked fish, break it up and treat it like couscous in a salad or just cube it and use it in savory puddings or as a stuffing for baked tomatoes or zucchini.

I started recycling stale corn bread instead of tossing it out after interviewing a Texas barbecue impresario who called himself Crazy Sam Higgins.

Along with educating me in the finer points of rubs rather than sauces and in smoking rather than grilling, he passed along a recipe for a corn-bread salad that he swore was so good that anyone who made it would be tempted to eat the whole bowlful. An ingredient list that started with a pint of mayonnaise made it easy to understand why.

But its more than just unflinching richness that makes this salad irresistible. Its the contrast of color and crunch in natural complements for corn: green onions, celery, bell pepper, pimientos and toasted pecans, and juicy tomatoes. I bake corn bread just to let it go cold so I can eat this.

Ive since come across corn-bread salad recipes that call for bacon, eggs, cheese, ranch dressing and other overkill ingredients. Ive experimented, adding Vidalia onions, fresh corn or pickled jalapenos, but this is one of those rare recipes you really cant improve.

I had better luck putting my imprint on another corn-bread makeover, a pudding from "Tom Douglas Seattle Kitchen" (Morrow, 2000) that had been haunting me for months before I decided to try it for a dinner party. The recipe called for a chefs extravagance of fresh herbs and cheese, but my menu had more of a Southwestern theme and two kinds of cheese already. I left out the Monterey jack, parsley, rosemary and thyme, and added bell pepper along with chipotle chilies in smoky adobo sauce. I didnt know whether to be wounded or flattered when there were leftovers of everything I cooked but that pudding.

Both dishes sound and taste very American but have antecedents in Europe.

Corn-bread salad is just a Texas twist on Tuscan bread salad, also a salvage operation for stale bread. The pudding is a savory take on pain perdu (alias French toast), in which stale bread absorbs a new identity thanks to eggs and dairy.

You could make either dish with purchased corn bread or with the over-sweetened kind from a mix, but that would be silly. It takes less time to make corn bread from scratch than it does for it to go stale.

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