Corn

Directions

1 cup uncooked cornmeal weighs 5¾ ounces (160 g).

1 cup uncooked hominy weighs 6 ounces (170 g).

Use 4 parts liquid to 1 part cornmeal to cook a cornmeal mush like polenta by the absorption method. Use the boil-like-pasta method for hominy.

Cook cornmeal as polenta for 25 to 45 minutes, though I often cook mine for much longer, adding liquid as needed to keep it creamy. For hominy, soak it overnight, then cook for about 1 hour.

1 cup (160 g) uncooked cornmeal yields 4 cups (1 kg) cooked.

1 cup (170 g) uncooked hominy yields 3 cups (720 g) cooked.>

Notes

Why I love it: As someone who cooked in Rome and owns an Italian restaurant, I equate corn with polenta. You can call it grits, cornmeal mush, or whatever suits your fancy, but for me, a pot of thick, smooth, golden cornmeal is corn's highest expression.

What it tastes like: Dried corn tastes nothing like fresh. That's because when corn is fresh, such as corn on the cob, it's considered a vegetable, but when it's dried, as in cornmeal, masa harina, hom- iny, or popcorn, corn becomes a grain and tastes more earthy than sweet. Hominy has a unique flavor, slightly sour and mineral-y with an appealing chewy texture.

Commonforms: Polenta is technically a specific kind of cornmeal made from Italian eight-row flint corn (otto file), but any medium or fine cornmeal will do as polenta. Grits are simply a coarsely ground cornmeal, and hominy (dried or canned) is corn kernels that have been nixtamalized (soaked in a lye or lime bath to soften the outer hulls). Hominy is ground into a flour called masa harina, which is then used to make masa, the basis of Mexican corn tortillas, tamales, and other dishes.

Favorite ways to prepare it: As polenta, natch. But corn fritters and corn bread are just fine, too. Hominy wants to swim in a soup or stew, where it can absorb all the surrounding flavor.

How it's good for you: For a while, corn was con- sidered not super nutritious, partly because of its association with the dreaded high-fructose corn syrup that so many food manufacturers were dos- ing their products with. And with the recent focus on healthy fats, corn was suspect because of its quantity of omega-6 fatty acids, which are not as nutritious as omega-3s. But the overall view is that corn is plenty healthy and is loaded with lots of antioxidants and carotenoids, including lutein and zeaxantin, which are good for eye health, and when it's nixtamalized (soaked in an alkaline solution), as is the case with corn used for tortillas, tamales, posole, and other Mexican, Central American, and South American dishes, the calcium and niacin con- tents increase.