My mom likes to remind my siblings and me that she grew up poor. Food and mealtimes offer occasion for her to recount her penniless Iowa upbringing.
When we celebrated the holidays with her in December, she turned a conversation about who in the family has an affinity for hot dogs into a woe is me moment: “We ate hot dogs all the time because that’s all we had,” Mom said.
Cornmeal presents more opportunities for my mom to wax poetic about her days of poverty. In her house, they used to fry leftover cornbread in lard then pour maple syrup over it. That was breakfast. They called it cornmeal mush. Cue the violin.
Scrapple is another fried cornmeal variation my mom associates with hard times. Rather than griddle baked cornbread, the cornmeal is cooked like polenta on the stovetop, mixed with some sort of meaty ingredient such as pork sausage, transferred to a dish to cool and set, then cut into wedges and fried.
David Tanis recounts in his “One Good Dish” (Artisan Books, 2013) that scrapple is a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch favorite and that the dish is featured on menus throughout the mid-Atlantic states. The variation that he offers in his cookbook brings Italian flavors into the picture: Spicy Italian fennel sausages, fresh rosemary and Parmesan cheese are all stirred into the cooked polenta before it gets set into a pie plate, refrigerated until firm, then fried in a cast-iron skillet.
Cornmeal might be a cheap ingredient, but it makes for mighty fine eating.
Griddled Polenta Scrapple
Excerpted from “One Good Dish” by David Tanis (Artisan Books), copyright © 2013.
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