Shrimp and Grits

› WASHINGTON, DC, 2008.............

Polenta, grits, and cornmeal are all, even at their finest, nothing more than ground corn. The best are whole-grain, stone-ground heirloom varieties, whether you are in northern Italy or the American South. The in-dustrially-produced grits and polenta you buy in grocery stores have been degerminated—that is, robbed of the germ, where the precious flavor-carrying oil is stored. They last forever on unrefrigerated shelves, but they taste like the paper they’re packaged in. Ground between steel rollers that actually heat up and cook the corn, they are also ground too finely. The best have nothing added to or taken away from them. I tried products from thirty mills before I found millers who used the right corn, grown in mountain hollers and allowed to dry in the fields, then ground between blue granite stones, with nothing added to or taken away from the corn.