The Believing is in the Tasting

Last month I posted a blog on my website about October being National Seafood Month. I listed my seafood favorites as well as the Once Was Enough Thank You options.

(Top of that list is escargot; shells stuffed with snails floating in copious amounts of melted garlic butter are revolting!)

This got me to thinking about foods that are unattractive yet not enough to be repelling. At the top of that list is Mexican cuisine. It's not pretty. No offense to those of Mexican heritage. The food is terrific; it just lacks an appealing color palette. Shades of beige and brown and murky yellow with salsa verde and guacomole kicking in some green tones and pico de gallo adding a splash of red.

Not my favorite colors but I don't care. That doesn't keep me from eating Mexican cuisine. Yummy stuff.

There were a few dishes my mom prepared when I was a kid that weren't pretty but tasted great. Like meatloaf. No matter what she added to the meat or what topped it off - tomato sauce, cheese - it didn't look good. Meatloaf did not and still doesn't make my hunger buds jump for joy, but, overlook its brownish-grayness and it can be surprisingly tasty.

Gumbo is another doesn't-taste-as-yucky-as-it-looks dish. Doesn't matter what kind it is:

Crayfish...

file Okra...

 
or Chicken & Andouille Sausage


 
none of them are remotely pretty. But, mmh-mmm, they are tres bon! 
 
With two cooking-large holidays coming up, it's nearing the time I dust off recipes that I use only once a year.  My family's mixed ethnicity gives me interesting options. Swedish and British on my mother's side of the family, Scottish and American Indian on my dad's. In my recipe collection there are two dishes that look terrible but taste oh so good. Thanks go to the17th century English colonists for Indian pudding. Because wheat was in short supply, to make their traditional hasty pudding they had to supplement wheat with corn, or Indian meal. The original recipe has undoubtedly been altered since the 17th century but it's still prepared the same way. The recipe I use:

3 C  milk                             1/2 tsp salt

1/4 C molasses                    1/2 tsp ground ginger

3 T cornmeal                       1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 large egg                          1/2 C cold milk

1/2 C sugar                          2-1/2 T unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing

Heat oven to 325°. In a small pan, scald milk. Whisk in molasses and cornmeal, cook until thickened. Remove from heat. In a small bowl, combine egg, sugar, salt, ginger, and cinnamon; stir into cornmeal/milk mixture. Pour into a greased 1-quart casserole. Bake 30 minutes. Add milk and butter. Continue baking about 1 hour. Serve with cream or ice cream.

I make Indian Pudding for Thanksgiving and Grape-Nut Pudding for Christmas. Equally unappealing to the eye, maybe even more so because what goes into the oven looking like shriveled up seeds floating in milk comes out looking like a mottled chunk of concrete. Makes you wish you were on my Christmas dinner guest list, doesn't it?

This recipe was my grandmother's which she got right off the back of a box of Post Grape-Nuts, circa 1930s.

1 quart milk                         Pinch of salt
3 large eggs, beaten            sprinkling of cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla                         1/2 cup sugar
                                           1 C Grape-Nuts cereal 

Heat oven to 350°. In a medium-size bowl mix all ingredients but the Grape-Nuts.Stir well. Stir in cereal. Pour into a buttered 2-quart glass baking dish. Place baking dish in a pan of water, enough to reach halfway up the side of the baking dish. Bake until a knife inserted in center comes out clean, about an hour. Stir mixture three to four times during baking to keep Grape-Nuts from settling.

Hm. Now that I see concrete and custard together, I realize I gave the pudding a bad rap. 

When it hardens at least it's edible. 

Recipes as well as their prepared results are like book covers: 

your first impression is only one layer of the whole story. 

 Any favorite unattractive food creations of your own?

Polly writes contemporary romance suspense novels under her given name and historical romances under her pen name, Isabel Mere. She lives in "cow-growing" country in Missouri's SW Ozarks. No street lights, no traffic jams, nary a stoplight. If she's not writing or mowing or taking care of dogs, she's at her secondhand bookshop, Bookmarks, LLC.

www.pollymccrillis.com

http://www.pollymccrillis.com/blog.html