Grit Snit

I have been experimenting with maize meal lately. Last week, I made organic yellow corn grits that I deemed tasty and pleasing although the boys, rather disloyally, disagreed. I confessed at the time to being a bit stymied by the grits' worryingly close resemblance to creamy polenta. Indeed, I'm convinced that it was, in fact, polenta - and quite magnifico it tasted, too.

But I still wanted grits. There was in my cupboard one as-yet untried maize product, you may recall, a blue cylinderful of smooth & creamy enriched old fashioned white hominy grits, just waiting for the opportunity to come out of hiding and prove its worth. The occasion would necessarily have to be a meal where the boys' attentions were otherwise engaged and just such an event occurred earlier this week, when they declared they wanted oven chips with their grilled steaks.

Sigh.

I am not really a big fan of oven chips - but neither do I relish heating up huge vats of oil on the stove-top when it's a zillion degrees outside. As a result, I usually keep a bag or two in the freezer, just to keep the peace. What I did not realize, however, was that Sir had previously snuck off the supermarket, bought a bag of battered chips, and then concealed it in the chill chest behind the home-made ice cream; duck stock; and cheese-making cultures. Battered chips! Talk about adding insult to injury. I decided that while the men in my life were eating ridiculous gluten and chemical-filled french fries - and best of luck to them, frankly - I would partake of virtuous all-natural creamy corn commendableness.

I do so enjoy taking the moral high ground, don't you?

Sidebar: If I were to be brutally honest, I would admit to having never actually tasted grits. I'm not sure how, at my advanced age, this is possible but I suspect my sheltered life far north of the Mason-Dixon line and across wide oceans may be at least partly to blame. That, and my previous devotion to pasta and gluten-filled cereals for side-dishes and morning fare. Something hot at breakfast? I was always a cream of wheat or oatmeal girl before I became a gluten guerrilla and forsook such inappropriate fare.

So before I could enjoy my grits I first had to decide how to cook my maize. I didn't want to go exotically international by accidentally making polenta (again!) or putu or sadza or sima or angu or ugali or amaliga. I wanted grits and I was determined to get them. Luckily, the manufacturers' food scientists had provided on the package's label a fool-proof recipe, no doubt for the benefit of cooks like me who failed to learn the correct method at their grandmother's knee.

I put on my reading glasses and studied the procedure for Cheese Grits.

I quote:

In a saucepan, slowly stir 1/2 cup of grits into 2 1/4 cups of boiling water. Reduce heat to medium low and cover. Cook for 12 to 14 minutes or until thickened, stirring occasionally.

Check. So far so good. I did as I was told and in no time at all I had a lovely (if somewhat bland-tasting) thick porridge bubbling away in my favorite round-bottomed, slope-sided, glass-lidded chef's pan.

What next, I wonder? Let's see ...

Add four ounces pasteurized process cheese spread, cubed.

Well, I can't recall what I said at this point in the proceedings, but I'm pretty sure only dogs could hear me. I don't suppose I need to point out that pasteurized process cheese spread is something I never, ever have in the house. I mean, oven chips are one thing, but cheese food is a whole nuther pot o' curds. If processed cheese spread is even made from curds. Which I doubt.

I rummaged around in our extensive fromage collection and found the heel of an old hunk of Essex St. Comte, ready to go off and enter cheese heaven unless it was given one final purpose in life. There were about three ounces' worth: I cubed it very small and stirred it into the mush, where in the time it takes to ask 'Where's the Velveeta?' it melted all creamy-like and delectable.

Saved!

Now what? I was almost afraid to look.

Add a dash of garlic powder and paprika (optional).

Oh, for crying out loud.

At this point I gave up all hope of being authentic and old-fashioned. I hastily retrieved from their jar five Peppadews®, reasoning that they were sort of paprika-like and would add a nice bit of rosiness and zest to the color-challenged dish before me. I chopped the peppers small and dumped them into the pan.

I tasted the contents and decided they were still in desperate need of seasoning. I added good measures of salt and freshly ground black pepper until I adjudged I had a fantastic side-dish on my hands. I puddled some on my plate and adorned it with a few slices of grilled beef, all rare and delicious. The starch was a perfect creamy foil to the protein's charred surface and sopped up the flavorful juices with great efficiency. It was all pretty damn fine, if neither old-fashioned, or traditional, or grits even.

Of course, the boys wouldn't even try them which was fine by me. I discovered the next day at lunch (and the day after that) that my side-dish microwaves fantastically, although it does get a little stiff over time, transmogrifying into something that is less creamy porridge and more solid cake, which in my book is no deficit.

But I think I have yet to taste grits.

Peppa? Don't Mind If I Dew!

Peppadews®, are my new favorite ingredient of all time.

These sweet piquante peppers (Contemporary and flirtatious! claim the manufacturer) are bottled in South Africa's Limpopo province using a secret recipe that offers the perfect balance of sweetness and bite, coolness and heat. These past two weeks I've been putting them in everything: salads, side-dishes, and sauces are all more awesome when a few of these red beauties are chopped up and added to the mix. They'll be great in cold summer dishes like chilled butternut soup and gazpacho (haven't got round to these, yet) and I am considering how to include some in the bittersweet chocolate ice cream I've got planned.

So It was with great consternation on Monday that I contemplated my half-empty jar of plump Capsici baccati, purchased at the Paarl branch of Pick & Pay on the last day of my vacation with DMR. Suspecting my stash wouldn't last forever, I had earlier planted sweet cherry tomatoes in my garden for bottling in due course - but that project is still weeks away. What to do in the interim?

After work I presented myself in Wegmans' pickles and condiments department to see if a suitable substitute might be found. And what did I spy on the top shelf at the very northern end of the long aisle, dusty but resolute, patiently waiting for a new home?

It turns out that African peppadews®, unlike African swallows, are migratory.

Composition and Hominy

Loyal readers will no doubt recall the circumstances of the Great South African Samp Scare, when I feared I had eaten an entire bowl of gluten accidentally (as opposed to eating an entire plateful on purpose, which is a catastrophe of a completely different sort).

Later that fateful day, frenzied internet research revealed that the samp accompanying my beef curry and beans was the same thing as cracked hominy and I retired for the night secure in the knowledge that my status as a gluten-freedom fighter extraordinaire (to that point, anyway) remained unsullied.

This past weekend, motivated by the possibilities of a whole new side-dish species, I selected a pound-bag of white hominy (known to the good folks at Goya as Maiz Trillado Blanco) from the exotic foreign foods aisle at Wegmans. As is my wont, I read the label with scrupulous care and found that the nutritional story was mixed. Of fat (grasa), cholesterol (colesterol); and sodium (sodio) there was nada - but neither was there any substantial benefit in the way of vitamins or minerals such as calcium. But - to my great felicidad - I found that a mere quarter-cup of cracked corn goodness yielded a full 56% of my USDA recommended daily intake of hierro - dire lack of which had served as my current conflict's opening salvo.

I bought two bags and hurried them to my casa.

Needing some inspiration for this new addition to my pantry, I happily perused my most-recent dead-tree purchase, South Africa Eats by Phillippa Cheifitz, obtained at one of Tambo International Airport's finer newsagents. While reading the recipe for Slow-Cooked Beef with Herbed Samp, I made the following somewhat vague yet unwelcome discovery:

Samp is stamped and coarsely broken dried corn kernels
similar to the coarse hominy of America,

but the two are produced by different processes.

Oh, for crying out loud.

Back to the internet I went!

According to Wikipedia, samp is 'a protocol used to encode role-based and user-based access control attributes for transmission over a network, typically embedded in a TCP/IP or UDP/IP packet, with an application layer payload trailing afterwards.'

Um ... that doesn't seem right ... Here's a better web definition:

Samp is dried corn kernels that have been stamped

and chopped until broken, but not as fine as Mielie-meal or mielie rice.

The coating around the kernel loosens and is removed

during the pounding and stamping process.

From The Serengeti Restaurant in sunny Murrays Bay, New Zealand (of all places) I learned that

samp is boiled up with beans and other vegetables and is known as gnush.

A traditional dish enjoyed by the Xhosa tribe in the Transkei and Eastern Cape
(Nelson Mandela's home!) of South Africa and also
enjoyed in Swaziland (known as umngqusho).

I already knew that last part.

Seemed straightforward enough. But how was that different from the hominy I'd purchased only hours before?

Well, it turns out that both samp and hominy are made from de-hulled corn kernels, but that traditional hominy undergoes nixtamalization with an alkali solution - indeed, the masa used to make tamales is merely hominy ground to a fine mash. What is kind of fascinating is that samp turns out to be a Native American word (probably of Narragansett origin), adopted by early New England interlopers to mean corn cereal. Both the word and the grain somehow made its way to Africa (like peanuts and cheeseburgers), where it quickly became a dietary staple (ditto).

Isn't that cool? It makes me want to become a culinary anthropologist when I grow up so I could study this sort of stuff all day.

At any rate, I cooked up my corn sort-of-how I remembered it and came up with an awesome dish that I served under poached salmon to rave reviews. Whatever you choose to call it, it's really really good.

And it might even make you magnetica.

Fractured Amy's South-African Style Hominy with Beans

Rinse about 8 oz cracked hominy (or samp if you can get it) and cover it with cold water to soak overnight.

The next day, put the grain in a saucepan and add water or vegetable stock to cover. I used a mixture of both because I didn't have enough leftover stock in the fridge. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 40 minutes or until it's tender.

Meanwhile, rinse and drain about 6 oz of canned beans. I used Great Northerns that I found in the pantry, but cannellini beans or any other smallish white bean would be appropriate.

To the beans, add:

• a bunch of spring onions, sliced thin.
• 6 peppadews®, chopped. Any mild/sweet bottled pepper would do, I suppose, but then your dish wouldn't be authentically South African.
• a handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped. I used some from my garden - the first harvest of the season!
• the grated zest of one orange, plus a few squirts of the juice.

When the hominy/samp is cooked, drain it and add it to the bean mixture. Check for seasoning (I added several grinds of black pepper and a bit of salt, too) and accompany with your favorite protein. I served the dish warm, but it would also be nice at room temperature as a summer salad.

Snack Attack

How does the intrepid gluten-freedom fighter keep up her strength when driving over heuwel and veldt, exploring the highways and byways of Paarl, Franschhoek, and Stellenbosch?

By ensuring she consumes a proper balance of vitamins, minerals, and other important nutrients, of course!

After painstaking research, I hit upon a winning combination of locally-produced, tasty, good-for-me nibbles: Safari-brand fruit-flavored blokkies for fiber and vitamin C; South African nougat with roasted almonds for manganese and iron; Amarula-filled chocolate bars for calcium and vitamin D; and peppadews® for vitamin E and magnesium.

Biltong and droewors provide much-needed protein, sodium, and fat ... 

... although these specimens went untasted.

Why? Because they had been carefully packaged for smuggling past inquisitive customs inspectors! The diligence of these otherwise irreproachable public servants, who are often distressingly single-minded in their search for confiscationable foodstuffs, is the reason why the gods invented vacuum-sealers, dirty laundry, and plastic luggage-wrap - judicious use of which renders such delectable contraband undetectable to the CBP's state-of-the-art hell-hound sniffer dogs.

Most of the time.