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Corn Meal Mush with Cheese (2)
Make thick corn meal mush, by sprinkling 1/2 pound yellow corn meal, a little at a time, into 3 cups salted boiling water. Remove 1 tablespoonful of mush at a time and lay it in a baking dish, being careful to preserve the oval spoon shape and keep each separated a little from the others. Sprinkle with grated hard cheese and moisten with butter browned in a pan, but not blackened. Put the dish in a hot oven for about 5 minutes to let the cheese melt in, then serve piping hot in the same dish it's baked in.
Since corn meal is also called Indian meal, in honor of its originators, such a dish should make you let out a good war whoop.
A stiff polenta shaped into spoon quenelles, browned butter and hard cheese, finished under high heat. The whole dish depends on getting the mush thick enough to hold its shape.
- The water is shortHalf a pound of cornmeal is about 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 cups, and 3 cups of water gives a roughly 1:2 ratio -- far stiffer than the 1:4 ratio often given for polenta. That stiffness is intentional here, since the mush must hold a spoon shape, but expect to stir hard and to add a splash more boiling water if the grain is still gritty before it sets.
- Cook it outNo time is given. Coarse yellow cornmeal needs 25 to 40 minutes of low, frequent stirring to lose its raw starchy taste; instant or fine-ground meal will thicken in five minutes and taste of nothing. Stop when a spoon dragged across the bottom leaves a clean trail.
- Indian mealAn older American name for cornmeal, used interchangeably in books of this period. Use stone-ground yellow meal, not corn flour and not masa harina, which is nixtamalized and behaves differently.
- A hot ovenRead this as 425-450F. Five minutes at that heat melts the cheese without drying the mush; a broiler set high for two or three minutes does the same job and gives better browning.
- Browned butter, not blackCook the butter until the milk solids turn hazelnut brown and it smells nutty, then pour it off the heat immediately -- it goes from brown to acrid in seconds. Burnt butter will dominate the whole dish.
- The cheese"Grated hard cheese" here means an aged grating cheese: Parmesan, Pecorino or a very dry aged provolone. About 3 to 4 oz is right for this quantity.
- ShapingDip the spoon in hot water between quenelles so the mush releases cleanly, and leave gaps between them so the butter and cheese reach the sides. Grease the baking dish or the bottoms will weld to it.
- YieldServes four as a side or two as a supper dish. Serve it in the baking dish as directed -- stiff mush stiffens further as it cools and loses its appeal within a few minutes.