Home › Cavewoman Breads, Dumplin's and Mush › Mush with Meat Gravy or Hash
Mush with Meat Gravy or Hash
Make a ring of rather thick corn meal mush around the rim of a dish and fill center with hash or gravy. Or, lay the mush in a hot dish, a large spoonful at a time, make a little hollow in each spoonful and fill with hash. Build up in layers until all is used, cover with hash or gravy and sprinkle with a little grated cheese.
Europeans thriftily save every bit of cheese scraps, which are dried somewhat, then grated and kept in a jar until needed. This is a good idea for cabin or permanent camp.
This is an assembly note rather than a full recipe: it assumes you already have a pot of cornmeal mush and a pan of hash or gravy going. The two things worth getting right are the stiffness of the mush and the heat of the serving dish.
- Mush proportions"Rather thick" mush means roughly 1 cup cornmeal to 3 cups water with a teaspoon of salt, whisked into boiling water and cooked 20-30 minutes over low heat until a spoon stands up in it. Thinner than that and the ring will slump and the hollows will fill in.
- Cornmeal choiceStone-ground medium or coarse meal gives the body this needs; degerminated fine cornmeal turns pasty. Yellow or white makes no practical difference here.
- Stirring and scorchingMush catches on the bottom the moment you stop stirring, and over a camp fire it does so fast. A heavy pot and frequent scraping of the base with a flat wooden spoon matter more than exact timing.
- What "hash" meansIn books of this period hash is usually leftover cooked meat chopped fine, often with cooked potato and onion, browned in fat and moistened with a little stock. Any thick meat stew or pan gravy works in its place.
- Serve the dish hotThe instruction to lay the mush in a hot dish is the hinge. Stiff mush sets and chills quickly; a cold platter turns it to a solid cake before it reaches the table. Warm the dish and serve immediately.
- The cheese jarHard grating cheeses -- parmesan, aged cheddar, dry jack -- are the ones that keep this way; rinds and dried ends grate finely and melt into the gravy. Soft or fresh cheeses do not dry safely and should not go into the jar. In a modern kitchen keep the grated scraps refrigerated or frozen rather than on a shelf.
- YieldOne cup of dry cornmeal makes about four servings, which pairs with roughly 2 cups of hash or gravy.
- The layered versionThe spoon-and-hollow method builds a loose casserole. Under a hot broiler for two or three minutes the cheese browns and the layers hold together enough to cut.
Cornmeal mush is the plain American form of a family of grain porridges that also includes Italian polenta and southern grits; the ring-of-mush-with-a-filling presentation was one nineteenth-century way to stretch a small quantity of meat across a table. Camp and outdoor cookbooks kept the technique long after home kitchens had moved on, because cornmeal travels dry, keeps well, and cooks with nothing but water and a fire. The aside about saving cheese scraps in a jar reflects a thrift habit also repeated approvingly in American writing: a hard cheese loses moisture rather than spoiling quickly, and the dried, grated remainder was treated as a seasoning to be doled out rather than as cheese to be eaten.