[Sca-cooks] treating food with lye

[Stefan li Rous]

Susan replied to my message about Polenta with:
<<< Further Mark's message is saying over
and over that 'any grain can be used' mentioning corn meal but not
hominy thus distinguishing grits from polenta. >>>

I'm assuming you are talking about the contents of the polenta file  
in the Florilegium which I mentioned rather than the message I wrote  
to this list. I'm not sure how inclusive that 'any grain' statement  
is. And that may not be even a widespread opinion. Florilegium  
message files (-msg) are collections of comments and opinions from  
multiple people. Sometimes directly opposing opinions can be found in  
the same file.

What effect does soaking a grain in lye have on it? When/where was  
this done in period Europe? I thought that polenta was mostly a  
northern Italian thing. Maybe they just didn't soak things in lye  
there, even if they did elsewhere.

<<< I think thats a lot of
grain splitting for a northerner who never remembers eating grits but
cream of wheat was a breakfast stand by if one could not think of
something less boring to eat. >>>

Yes, I tend to find polentas, gruel, pottages to be rather bland and  
repetitious. I guess that's one advantage of not being a peasant in  
the SCA.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****