Good and Polenta-y

Campers, the wet cold dreichness of a Scottish August seems to have followed us home to Pennsylvania - and my compulsion to conserve the ripest, freshest summer produce has duly transformed into an urgent need to bake. This often happens when I am faced with rainy weather and many, many loads of laundry.

Inspired, perhaps, by my recent holiday and yearning once again for a slice of Valvona and Crolla's excellent syrup-soaked gluten-free orange polenta cake, I did something I don't normally do - I spent a few moments trawling the web for likely-looking procedures.

Now, I am on record as being distrustful of internet recipes and the ten minutes I devoted to the task were largely spent in vain. Most of the schemes I discovered involved the use of some proportion of *shudder* wheat flour; quick-cooking polenta (non in questa vita!); or strange manufacturer-specific sugars that I do not keep in the house.

No, I needed to be able to produce a gluten-free cake without any weird or convenience ingredients and did what I usually do in these circumstances: I made it up as I went along.

As a foundation for my cake I decided to use my favorite corn flour (organic! stone ground!) rather than coarse polenta, which I thought would provide too challenging a texture in the final product - if it even cooked at all. One of the recipes I found included some ground almonds in the batter, which I thought sounded like a fine idea - so I stole it. For the syrup, I decided to use turbinado sugar because I thought the brown caramel earthiness would provide a nice counterpoint to the oranges. I considered adding some orange liqueur or Amaretto to the syrup but didn't, in the end, as I'm pretty sure the cake at V&C was alcohol-less.

The fabrication of the cake proved to be simplicity itself, apart from the fact that in the process my trusty handmixer gave up the ghost with a fearful screeching and clanking and, if I'm not mistaken, a small puff of smoke. This alarming event necessitated the hasty retrieval of my standmixer from its appointed Metro shelf and production resumed without further incident. 

The result was extremely delicious, if I say so myself - one of my best yet, in fact. It was as moistly sweet and toothsome as the cake I enjoyed in Edinburgh (and looked like it, too!) and sufficiently cheerful and zesty to drive away gloomy thoughts of rain.

Orange Polenta Cake alla Scozzese

For the cake

• 3 eggs
• 7 oz granulated sugar
• 7 oz butter, melted and cooled
• 5 oz ground almonds
• 5 oz corn flour (organic! stone ground!)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp vanilla
• grated zest of one orange
• pinch o' salt

For the syrup

• strained juice of 2 oranges
• 5 oz turbinado sugar
• splash of booze, if desired

Preheat your oven to 350 deg F. Butter and line a 9" round cake pan with silicon parchment.

Beat the eggs and sugar together vigorously until you get a light mousse. Slowly beat in the melted butter.

Add the almonds, corn flour, and baking powder and combine well. Mix in the remaining ingredients.

Pour the batter into your prepared tin and bake for 45 minutes or until the cake is done.

While that is happening, combine the orange juice and sugar in a small pan and heat slowly until the sugar is dissolved. Raise the heat and boil for about three minutes, or until you have a nice syrup. Add the booze at the end if you are using it.

As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, brush the hot syrup over the top - you might not need it all. Leave the cake on a rack and remove it from the pan when it is cool. Serve at room temp (or slightly heated in the microwave) with powdered sugar, thick cream, or ice cream.

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.

True Grits

Sure I've heard of grits.

I just never actually seen a grit before.

~Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny, one of Sir's all-time favorite flicks

As the Diva and I enjoyed our boffo brunch on Sunday, the subject of food came up in conversation as it almost inevitably does. She wondered what we were doing a chez Fractured Amy for side dishes these days, and I was forced to confess that in the area of starches we are somewhat limited, relying mainly on potatoes and rice. Gluten-free pasta, of course, is nothing but heartbreak. Quinoa has been off the menu ever since I was alerted to the dire effects its international marketing is having on the good people of Bolivia. I am having trouble getting behind such earthy-crunchy grains as buckwheat and amaranth. The boys despise beans of all kinds and although Sir will eat a lentil if it's concealed in a spicy dahl, the Kid Squid wouldn't touch one with a pair of eighteen-inch grilling tongs. Chickpeas are acceptable to all, but consuming them in side-dish-sized quantities is something one only does at extreme peril to one's digestive well-being.

Recently, though, I have been turning to maize products with great success - most notably in my untangling of the samp mystery and the invention of my newest protein-rich dish, South African Style Hominy and Beans (which, sadly, the boys dislike intensely). Maize meal also appeared on my radar recently when I mistakenly thought Floyd used it as the centerpiece for this Top Chef Master-worthy dish of upma with mushrooms - and although it turned out his upma was made from semolina, it still got me to thinking.

I currently use organic yellow cornmeal in various delicious applications such as corn bread, hasty pudding and hoecakes, but I had to ask myself why I haven't yet tried that traditional all-American down-home side-dish of gluten-free champions, grits?

Determined to redress this deficit ASAP, I popped into the supermarket on my way home only to be immediately brought up short by the realization that grits, like so many other things in my life at present, are complicated.

I found two different varieties. The first, from Bob and His Red Mill, I located in the organic/health food/bleeding-heart liberal aisle. They were called Organic Corn Grits and through the clear bag I observed their rough texture (like coarse sand) and bright yellow hue. I noted from the label that the contents were low in fat, reasonably high in fiber, protein-bearing and packed with iron. I also saw that they require refrigeration after they've been opened: I discovered later that such ground corn retains its oily germ and starchy endosperm. While this wholesomeness is what accounts for the grits' awesome nutritional value, it also causes them to spoil quickly if not kept cool. No problem - there's plenty of room left in the chill chest ever since the great February Fridge Purge.

The second breed of grits I found in the breakfast cereal aisle. The tubular blue-striped packaging sported a rather smug-looking eighteenth-century religious non-conformist of the pacifistical persuasion, and the label declared the contents to be Old-Fashioned Smooth and Creamy Enriched White Hominy Grits. I found it interesting that old-fashioned Friends understood the importance of niacin, thiamin, riboflavin, and folic acid, and reasoned that they had to add these substances in order to gain any sort of nutritional benefit whatsoever from their degerminated product. When I got the grits home I discovered that these too had a rough texture but were snowy white in color, just like my nixtamilized hominy.

Trivia alert: did you know that if you eat hominy slaked with lime or lye you will never get pellagra? FYI!

Anyway. I decided to cook up the yellow variety for the evening meal, because I thought it would provide a pleasingly colorful counterbalance to the rather beige plate of grilled pork and cauliflower I had planned.

I consulted a number of culinary references and concluded that my grits should be cooked in liquid at a ratio of around 1:3. I brought three cups of salted water to the boil (I'm low on stock, at present, and will not be making more until the Fall), sprinkled in one cup of grits (stirring all the while), and let them bubble quietly for fifteen minutes, giving them the occasional scrape 'n stir with my best wooden spoon. When they were good and thick and soft and clapped the lid on the pan and let them sit for five more minutes. At the end of that time I removed the lid and peeked expectantly into my pan to see what my efforts had wrought.

What they had wrought was an extremely polenta-like substance. So polenta-like, in fact, that I was moved to add a blob of butter; some fresh grated parmesan cheese; a few grinds of black pepper; and some sage leaves from the garden. My Southern-Style Pork Loin with Cauliflower and Creamy Grits became Carne di Maiale al'Italiano con Cavolfiore e Polenta Cremosa - a fine dish to be sure, but not what I'd originally had in mind.

I thought it was awesome but the boys were adamant: no matter what the name, they hated the dish. Hated ... the ... dish. Neither of them seems able to embrace maize the way he should, I'm afraid: Sir blames his English upbringing ('It's not in my culture, you know!') and the Kid Squid - well, the Kid Squid has a thing about texture and that's all I feel able to say on the matter.

*sigh*

I guess it's back to potatoes and rice.

Coming soon: True Grits, Take Two. I brown bag white hominy grits to work for a fine microwaved lunch and eat them all by myself.