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Some Food Variants
the preparation of corn meal in delectable foods. It is a long step from plain corn meal mush to scrapple, which we consider the highest and best form of preparing this sort of dish, but all the intermediate steps come from a desire to please the taste with a change from simple corn meal. Crackling corn bread is the first step, and here we find that the darkies of the South found good use for the remnants of the pork after lard was tried out at hog-killing time, by mixing the cracklings with their corn meal and making a pone which they cooked before an open fire on a hoe blade, the first of this being called "cracklin' hoe cake."
Good scrapple is one of the finest breakfast dishes that we know during the winter, and when prepared after the recipe given here it precedes all other forms of serving corn meal. To mix it properly one must know the proper values of herbs and condiments, and this recipe is the result of much discriminating study. Modesty prevents us giving it more than the name of "scrapple." It is prepared in the following manner, differing from that made in Philadelphia: SCRAPPLE Take a young pig's head and boil it until the flesh drops from the bones, in water to which has been added two good-sized onions, quartered, five bruised cloves of garlic, one bay leaf, sweet marjoram, thyme, rosemary, a little sage, salt, and pepper. Separate the meat from the bones and chop fine. Strain off the liquor and boil with corn meal, adding the chopped meat. Put in the corn meal gradually, until it makes a stiff mush, then cook for half an hour with the meat. Put in shallow pans and let cool. Το serve slice about half an inch thick and fry in olive oil or butter to a light brown. As originally prepared the tamale was made for conveyance, hence the wrappings of corn husk. This is a Spanish dish, having been brought to this country by the early Spanish explorers, and adopted by the Indian tribes with whom they came in contact. In the genuine tamale the interior is the sauce and meat that goes with the corn meal which is alternately laid with the husks, and when made the ends are tied with fine husk. For meat, chicken, pork, and veal are considered the best. There is also a sweet tamale, made with raisins or preserves. The following recipe for tamales was given us by Luna:
TAMALES Boil one chicken until the meat comes from the bones. Chop the meat fine and moisten it with the liquor in which it was boiled. Boil six large chili peppers in a little water until cooked so they can be strained through a fine strainer, and add to this the chopped chicken, with salt to taste and a little chopped parsley. Take corn meal and work into it a lump of butter the size of an egg, adding boiling water and working constantly until it makes a paste the consistency of biscuit dough. Have ready a pile of the soft inner husks of green corn and on each husk spread a lump of dough, the size of a walnut, into a flat cake covering the husk. In the center of the dough put a teaspoonful of the chopped meat with minced olive. On a large husk put several tablespoonfuls of chopped meat with olives. Roll this together and lay on them other husks until the tamale is of the size desired. Tie the ends together with strips of fine husk and put in boiling water for twenty minutes. Either veal or pork may be used instead of chicken.
Polenti, properly prepared, is a dish that requires much labor, and scarcely repays for the time and exertion spent in its making. It differs from scrapple in that the ingredients are mixed in a sauce and poured over the mush instead of being mixed in the meal. In the New Buon Gusto restaurant, in Broadway, they cook polenti to perfection, and when it is served with cippino it leaves nothing to be desired. This is the recipe: For the gravy: Make a little broth with veal bone, a small piece of beef, a pig's foot, neck, feet and gizzard of chicken. In a separate kettle cook in hot oil one sliced onion, one clove of garlic, a little POLENTI parsley, one bell pepper, one tomato, a small piece of celery, and a carrot. Cook until soft and then add this to the broth with a few dried mushrooms. Cook slowly for thirty minutes and then strain.
For the mush: Boil corn meal until it is thoroughly done and then cool it until it can be cut in slices for frying. Mix butter and olive oil and heat in a frying pan and into this put the slices of corn meal, frying to a light brown. Place the fried corn meal in a platter in layers, sprinkling each with grated Parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper. Take parsley and one clove of garlic chopped fine and a can of French mushrooms cut in quarters, and fry in butter, then add enough gravy to pour over the fried corn meal. Place this in an oven for a few minutes then serve.
Table d'hote is the feature of San Francisco's restaurant life. It is the ideal method for those who wish
Three cornmeal dishes with very different ancestries, and none of the recipes gives a quantity for the cornmeal itself — in each case you add it gradually until the texture is right. A few notes on the vessels, the meats and the timings.
- The hinge: add meal to hot liquid slowlyAll three recipes rely on judging cornmeal by feel rather than measure. Rain it into simmering liquid in a thin stream while whisking, or it will seize into lumps that never smooth out. For scrapple, stop when a spoon stands up in the mush; roughly one part medium-grind meal to four parts stock by volume gets you close.
- Corn meal means cornmealNot corn flour, not masa harina, and not the instant polenta sold in boxes. Medium-grind yellow or white cornmeal is what these recipes assume. For the polenta, coarse grind gives slices that hold together better under the frying pan.
- A young pig's headStill available from a butcher who breaks down whole pigs, usually on order, and often split in half. Weight varies a great deal with the age of the animal, so judge yield by eye rather than by a fixed figure; a good-sized head will give a few pounds of picked meat, plus a gelatinous stock that is the entire point. Ears, snout and tongue all go into the chop. Simmer, not boil, for 3 to 4 hours until the meat truly falls away.
- Skim the stock, but not too hardThe recipe says only to strain the liquor. Chill it and lift the hard fat cap, but leave the gelatin — that is what makes scrapple slice cleanly. If the cooled loaf will not hold together, the stock was too thin or the mush too loose.
- Scrapple pans and slicing"Shallow pans" means loaf pans or a small sheet pan lined with plastic wrap. Chill overnight, uncovered at first so the surface dries. Slices under half an inch fall apart in the pan; the half inch specified is right, and they need to sit undisturbed until a crust forms before you turn them. A pig's head yields enough for 12 or more breakfasts, and it freezes well.
- Corn husks for tamalesThe recipe assumes fresh green husks in season. Dried husks, sold in bags at any Latin grocery, need 30 minutes in hot water first. Steam the tamales rather than putting them "in boiling water" — submerged, the dough leaches into the pot. Twenty minutes is short for the quantity described; 45 to 60 minutes in a steamer is more realistic, and the dough should pull away from the husk cleanly.
- The tamale masaCornmeal worked with butter and boiling water gives a coarser, more porridge-like tamal than the masa most cooks expect. If you want the familiar texture, masa harina is the substitute, though it is a departure from what is written here.
- Six large chili peppersThe recipe does not say whether these are fresh or dried; dried pods, simmered and then pushed through a sieve to leave the skins behind, suit the method as written. If using dried chiles, modern practice is to toast them dry for a minute first, which deepens the flavor.
- Polenta timings and the oven"Boil corn meal until it is thoroughly done" means something like 40 minutes of slow stirring for coarse meal, less for medium. The book gives no oven temperature; the final pass "in an oven for a few minutes" needs only enough heat to melt the Parmesan and warm the gravy through. "Cippino" is cioppino, the San Francisco fish stew, served alongside.
- YieldsThe recipe leaves tamale size to the cook ("until the tamale is of the size desired"), so the count from one chicken varies; expect somewhere around a couple of dozen if you keep them small. The polenta gravy, built on a veal bone, a pig's foot and chicken trimmings, produces perhaps a quart -- enough to sauce fried slices for six.
Scrapple, tamales and polenta sit together here because Bohemian San Francisco (Clarence Edwords, 1914) is built around the city's restaurants rather than around national cuisines, and cornmeal was the thread that ran through the German-Pennsylvanian, Mexican and Italian kitchens trading within a few blocks of each other. The claim that the tamale is "a Spanish dish, having been brought to this country by the early Spanish explorers, and adopted by the Indian tribes" is exactly backwards: tamales are Mesoamerican, documented long before contact, and the husk-wrapped, steamed corn dough is one of the oldest continuously prepared foods in the hemisphere. The scrapple recipe is a genuine variant, and the text says as much ("differing from that made in Philadelphia") -- Philadelphia scrapple leans on sage and black pepper and buckwheat as well as cornmeal, while this one reaches for garlic, bay, marjoram, thyme and rosemary, and finishes in olive oil, which is a San Francisco Italian's hand on a Pennsylvania Dutch dish. "Luna" was a Mexican restaurateur Edwords knew by name, and the New Buon Gusto was a real Broadway restaurant; Edwords was recording named cooks in named rooms, in a quarter the 1906 fire had swept through less than a decade before he wrote.