Home › Recipes › CORNMEAL Golden Grains
CORNMEAL Golden Grains
2 1/2 cups water 1/2 cup cornmeal 1 teaspoon salt Heat the water to boiling in the inner cup of the double boiler. Add the salt. With a batter whip stir the cornmeal into the water. Continue stirring until the mixture is thickened, then set the inner cup in the outer cup of the double boiler, which contains boiling water, and continue cooking one hour. Serve with cream or maple sirup. If desired, three-fourths cup of dates that have been washed, stoned, and cut into small pieces, may be stirred into the cereal before serving, making Golden Grains with Dates. Serve with cream.
This is cornmeal mush by another name, cooked long and slow over water so it never scorches. Almost nothing here needs translating, but a few details are worth pinning down.
- "Inner cup" and "outer cup"These are the insert and the water pan of a double boiler. Any heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water works, though a metal insert transfers heat faster and will thicken the meal more readily at the start.
- Start it over direct heatThe first stage happens in the insert set directly on the burner, not over water — boiling water alone will not bring the mixture to the thickening point quickly. Only after it has thickened does it go over the water bath.
- Avoiding lumpsA "batter whip" is a wire whisk. Rain the meal into the boiling water in a thin stream while whisking constantly; alternatively slake it first in a little of the measured water, held back cold, and stir that into the pot.
- Which cornmealUse fine or medium stone-ground cornmeal, not the degerminated quick-cooking sort and not coarse polenta. The full hour of gentle cooking is what makes the difference in texture, so do not cut it short to twenty minutes.
- Proportions and consistencyFive parts water to one part meal by volume gives a soft, spoonable porridge rather than a stiff mush that can be sliced and fried. Add a little boiling water during cooking if it tightens more than you want.
- "Sirup"An older spelling of syrup, common in American cookbooks of the period. Maple syrup rather than a flavoured table blend is presumably what is meant.
- Dates"Stoned" means pitted. Modern packaged dates are usually already pitted and need no washing; stir them in only at the end, as prolonged cooking dissolves them into the cereal.
- YieldRoughly two and a half cups cooked, enough for two or three breakfast servings.