Bonus Recipe: Spoonbread – Polenta’s New World Cousin

Tagliatelle Isn’t Everything

Emilia Romagna, in case you didn’t realize it, is somewhat in Polenta Territory. It is offered in a  soft puddle like our grits – although I do miss the pats of butter. It often replaces potatoes as a side dish. Pasta is NEVER a side dish.  Not for nothing are Northerners here sometimes referred to as polentoni. From its discovery and transoceanic voyage from the New World to the Old by the late 16th century, corn or maize has been a mainstay of cucina povera in Italy. The main difference that I can see and taste between polenta and grits, is that the former is made from yellow dent corn and is somewhat smooth and meatier in flavor, while grits in the American South are made from white dent corn, which is sweeter and, well, grittier. And while polenta  can be served soft or refrigerated and then fried or grilled, you really can’t do that with grits – I certainly have tried and failed. 

I love polenta and I love grits but I have decided this year  to introduce my Italian family and aquaintances to spoonbread, which is still another ground corn recipe. As you may know, it is a Southern specialty and to me much tastier than most cornbread recipes.Yet, mysteriously it’s not served as frequently as cornbread is in restaurants that tout Southern menus. Despite my preference for spoonbread as a side dish, I am tempted to do a cornbread stuffing for our tiny Italian  turkey this year.  Tiny being defined by 14 pounds (Italian butchers view huge turkeys as something ungodly ) instead of a whopping 32, which I actually did manage to stuff and roast one year at Thanksgiving. We are still talking about that one. 

A  Mashup of Old & New Worlds

 Spoonbread is a unique mashup of an indigenous American culinary tradition and a French technique taught to enslaved cooks in the South. According to the research done by the stalwart writers at Wikipedia, its origins come from the Owendaw Indians, in particular the Sewee tribe  in what is now South Carolina. Its antecedant is included in the The Carolina Housewife Cookbook  (written and published by Sarah Rutledge in 1847) as Owendaw Cornbread. I found it interesting that it was first published anonymously as the Carolina tradition was that a Charleston woman’s name only appears in print “thrice, when born, when married and then buried”.  The souffle technique in which you blend the yolks to enrich the base and then whisk the whites to a meringue and fold them in lifted this Indian porridge to another level. Baking soda or powder sometines was added in later recipes to stabilize the poufiness of spoonbread. 

My Southern Cooking Heroine

My two favorite versions of this recipe actually come from Camille Glenn’s unbelievably rich cookbook – The Heritange Of Southern Cooking. It has 500 recipes, almost 100 of them for dessert, which is a delight for me.  We carrried it in the shop for years. In my opinion, she had the real recipe for Brunswick Stew, because it included squirrel. Although I have eaten the real Brunswick Stew,  I can’t claim to have attempted that one in all its authenticity. The unabashed photographs of life in the South, while too small in my paperback version, are fascinating to me. The daughter of Kentucky innkeepers, Glenn later ran her own catering business and cooking school. She championed local produce, butter, cream and Cointreau – all things I approve of. 

I am including her two recipes for spoonbread here, as the book is now out of print and I can’t find them even in the deep void of the internet. The first is my favorite for family meals, and the second for bigger gatherings. Both use that French soufflé technique, but the first is backed up by a bit of baking powder. I did try the first recipe  with an extra egg white and yolk and no baking powder, but that does not work well. I also add more fine sea salt to both recipes.

By the way,  to go along with the spoonbread (note the pats of butter) also on the plate pictured, is my version of fried chicken done solely in bacon grease. No easy task to save bacon grease in Italy, but we have a jarful in our tiny Italian fridge. Some things are sacred, and for them we are truly thankful.