Day 240 - Mămăligă, Polenta, and Coucou

I never thought of cornmeal mush as a delicacy as a child. Mom didn't serve it; her cornmeal breakfast dish was Johnny cakes, more like cornbread than porridge. But we made cornmeal mush in Mrs. Farden's home economics in 7th grade where we smothered it in maple syrup to make it go down.

Image of mămăligă with sarmale or stuffed grape leaves
by **emmar**, via Flickr.com

So I was surprised when I landed in Romania and not only discovered the Romanian version of cornmeal mush, served nearly every day in Bucharest homes - mămăligă - but I also discovered that I liked it. There was no maple syrup served with mămăligă. Instead, the condiments that covered it were fried eggs, sour cream, and/or shredded goat cheese similar to feta cheese. I could do without the eggs, but what doesn't taste better smothered in sour cream?

Mămăligă is peasant food, not often served in restaurants in either Romania or Moldova. Perhaps that is just one more reason I like it; it usually meant I was being served it at someone's home, a rare event in Romania during my year there. Making mămăligă took hours, and strong arms, because of the time needed to stir the mixture in the pot to make sure no lumps form. The consistency of mămăligă varies from thin enough to require being served with a spoon to thick enough to be cut with a thread wrapped around the loaf-shaped batch and then pulled tight to slice off a section.

Image of polenta with wild boar stew
 by Rubber Slippers In Italy, via Flickr.com

Nearly every country in southern Europe has a similar cornmeal based dish. In Italy it is polenta, a dish that has a much higher-status reputation than mămăligă. One of the two French lecturers in Iaşi while I was there turned his nose up at mămăligă initially, until he decided to will his brain and stomach to consider it transformed into polenta. I happen to like polenta very much as well although I may never have tried it if I hadn't met the French lecturer in Iaşi.

But I was surprised to find a popular cornmeal dish in Barbados, too - coucou. When I heard the name, I thought it might be related to couscous, the north African dish made from very fine pieces of wheat. There might be some linguistic connection between couscous and coucou, and they are both the starch that holds everything else at the meal together, and I like both of them. But they are quite different and coucou is my favorite.

And that's amazing because in addition to cornmeal, coucou is made with okra, that slimy vegetable full of seeds. The okra slime is likely what keeps the meal together when cooked. If I hadn't known okra was an important ingredient, I would never have known it was in coucou. I don't know if that is evidence that okra doesn't have much flavor or if the hot sauce that is usually served with coucou overpowers the okra flavor.

Image of flying fish (bottom left) and coucou (top left)
with vegetables by berzowska, via Flickr.com

Coucou with flying fish is one of the most typical Bajan meals, served in many of the downtown restaurants, especially those catering to the local population. When my parents came down to visit us in Barbados, Dad was surprised to find flying fish on the menus since during his Merchant Marine days in the Caribbean, they used to just sweep those fish off the deck and back into the ocean. The fish were so small they didn't think they were worth cleaning to cook and eat.

I haven't found a restaurant in the United States yet where I can get either mămăligă or coucou. Thankfully, polenta can be found on the menu in Italian restaurants, giving me an occasional opportunity to remember Mrs. Farden's lesson on cornmeal mush for breakfast with pleasant memories.