The Gritty,Wonderful Truth About Cornmeal

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CHEWY, NUTTY, AND FULL OF FIBER

The cornmeal we got from that Alabama grain mill was coarse ... so coarse that it lent a chewy, nutty, man-you're-really-eating-something quality to every dish it went into. Naturally, corn can also be ground as fine as wheat flout and used in much more delicate recipes.

Coarse or fine, white or yellow (the color depends on the variety of corn), cornmeal is a good source of roughage, the dietary fiber that helps keep our lower digestive tracts in proper working order. It's also a good buy, since lack of demand keeps the price of cornmeal low. (As yet, the moguls of processed food haven't found any way—except for corn chips—to doll this grain up and quadruple its price.)

Of course, you don't have to buy cornmeal: If you grow and dry your own corn, you may be able to take it to a nearby mill to be ground ... orbetter still-you can grind it yourself.

If you'd rather buy the ready-made product, though, your best bet would be to visit any grocery stores in your area which cater to an Italian or Mexican (or southern U.S.) trade. My husband and I used to purchase our cornmeal in bulk—from huge, open barrels displaying grinds of varying degrees of coarseness—at a Chicago grocery with the wonderfully improbable name "Conte di Savoia" (The Count of Savoy). If you can't locate an aristocratic-sounding market—or even a pedestrian-sounding one-near you that carries cornmeal, try a health food store. (Be prepared, though, to pay a premium price at such establishments.)

HOW TO GET THE MOST FROM YOUR MEAL

Cornmeal—like corn itself—is not a good source of complete protein. By serving the meal with cheese, fish., meat, and/or beans of any kind, however, you can complement the cornmeal's incomplete protein with the protein(s) in the other food(s). As a result, you wind up providing your body with more total usable protein than any of the individual foods could've contributed alone. (Frances Moore Lappe' discusses protein complementation at length in her fine book, Diet for a Small Planet — $1.95 from MOTHER'S Bookshelf—and devotes whole chapters to both cornmeal/bean dishes and cornmeal/soy/milk combinations. I highly recommend that you read them.)

At any rate, keep the idea of complementing corn's incomplete proteins with other complete or incomplete proteins in mind when you select side or main dishes to go with the recipes shown below. Serve a complementary meat or bean dish—along with dark green salad leaves (plus, perhaps, some slices of tomato and green pepper)—with the following dishes, and you can enjoy the best of both worlds: made-for-each-other flavors and good nutrition!

CHICKEN WITH POLENTA

Polenta is a moist, crustless bread-like substance made by stirring cornmeal into boiling water and cooking the resulting mush until it thickens and almost solidifies. The hot polenta is then turned out onto a platter or wooden board and sliced and-in this recipe-the resulting slabs are used as cushions on which to lay pieces of subtly seasoned fried chicken which is covered with bronzy-red sauce.

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