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Cajun Couche Couche
2 CUPS CORN MEAL 1/2 TEASPOON SALT 11/2 CUPS BOILING WATER 3 TEASPOONS BAKING POWDER 2 EGGS, WELL BEATEN I TEASPOON FAT Mix meal and salt, stir in boiling water, and let cool. Stir in baking powder and eggs. Heat fat in Dutch oven or thick frying pan. Pour in the batter, and let cook until a thin crust is formed on the bottom. With a pan cake turner scrape this crust loose and let it remain in rest of batter. Repeat several times. Reduce heat, cover close and let steam slowly until done, about 10 minutes. Eat with morning coffee or eat for dessert with butter and syrup. Cajuns are the Arcadian French celebrated in Longfellow's Evangeline who settled in southern Louisiana and intermarried with the Indians, and couche couche is their corruption of couscous, an Arabian dish still common in southern France.
A skillet cornmeal mush cooked crust-side-down and repeatedly scraped, so the finished dish is a mass of loose browned crumbs rather than a smooth porridge. The scraping is the whole technique.
- The scraping is the pointLet the batter sit undisturbed until a crust sets on the bottom, then lift and break it loose with a stiff turner and fold it back in. Repeating this several times, as the recipe directs, gives the crumbly, half-toasted texture that distinguishes couche couche from grits or polenta.
- CornmealPlain stone-ground yellow or white cornmeal, medium grind. Not self-rising cornmeal (the recipe adds its own baking powder) and not degerminated instant mixes, which turn pasty when scalded.
- Water measurementThe liquid is 1 1/2 cups boiling water. Scalding the meal before the eggs go in is what keeps it from tasting raw and starchy; let it cool to warm or the eggs will set on contact.
- FatOne teaspoon is the minimum for a well-seasoned pan and will give a pale result. A more generous amount of lard, bacon drippings or oil, enough to film the whole bottom, will brown the crust better.
- Heat and vesselA cast-iron skillet or bare Dutch oven, as the recipe allows, over medium heat for the crust stage, then low with the lid on for the steaming. Cornmeal scorches quickly and the burnt taste carries through everything.
- DonenessTen minutes covered is about right once the crust rounds are done. The mixture should be dry and crumbly with no wet cornmeal at the centre; if it still tastes chalky, cover and give it another five minutes.
- Yield and servingTwo cups of meal makes a family-sized breakfast dish. It is eaten hot, either with milk poured over it like a cereal, or with butter and cane syrup as the recipe suggests. It stiffens as it cools.
Couche couche is a Louisiana French breakfast staple, cooked in cast iron and eaten with milk, syrup or coffee, and it belongs to a wide family of New World cornmeal mushes that also includes grits, cush and fried mush. The book's etymology is the one usually offered: that the name is a rendering of couscous, and the connection is traditionally drawn either to North African cookery by way of French colonial contact or, more often in recent accounts, to African cooks in Louisiana kitchens. Either way it is an inherited name attached to a wholly maize-based dish, since couscous proper is made from wheat semolina rolled by hand, not from cornmeal scalded in a pan. The Acadians the entry describes were expelled from Nova Scotia by the British beginning in 1755 and resettled in south Louisiana, a story Longfellow turned into the narrative poem Evangeline in 1847; "Arcadian," the spelling the book uses, is a long-standing variant of "Acadian."