Pasta, noodles, mush and [Sca-cooks] Apicius' polenta recipe

[Nick Sasso]

You make a good food archeology point here.  The Gnocchi seem a very likely
relative here.  Te question, though, of mush versus gnocchi seems more
textural than fundamental recipe, no?  Polenta would be more course than a
gnocchi paste, but seems could be the same ingredients and technique, to a
point.  This particular group of recipes is not kneaded and roiled into
ropes like some of the more common gnocchi, instead they seem to have the
technique more similar to the much/polenta family.

This is a fascinating line of thought for me in running through the rampant
variation on boiled semolina/grain (course to fine) that turns variously
into sheet pasta, extruded and shaped pastas, dumplings and puddings of
sort.  numbing as the American Mexican variants of tortilla and meat; this
is more elegant and utilitarian to be so creative.  Different resulting
final forms of the paste/grain that have so varied and useful purposes from
cappelini to gnocchi to cannelloni.  And this Apicius guy could have been a
documented early publisher of roman tribute to grain paste boiled and fried.

I gotta let this one percolate for a bit.  My mind is racing and I need to
think clearly about how other civilizations have modified the noodle base
paste to various uses (wontons & shiao mai <sp> & cellophane noodles &
steamed dumplings, et al.)

niccolo difrancesco
(a fervent devotee to the simple elegance of pasta as food and palette for
art)


> -----Original Message-----

>
> The first thing that comes to mind here to me, more than fried mush,
> is gnocchi a la romana...
>
> I had originally asked about the connection between fried mush and
> polenta and Apicius because while this thread was starting, I was
> involved in a private discussion wherein some equivocation was made
> between polenta and corn/maize-meal-mush. Which is not the
> be-all and
> end-all of polenta, but it's the first thing most moderns think of.
>
> Adamantius