Of corn muffins and relationships

I woke up this morning and thought: I love my husband.

We have been married 12 years and been together almost 20, so you are probably thinking it doesn’t take a genius to get that. Or, if you are the cynical kind you are probably thinking: still?

Let’s just say that even if love is presumably the foundation of marriage, it is not always center stage. Life, we all know, gets in the way. Life is quite the diva, cherishing the spotlight, pushing and shoving its way to the front and relegating the true protagonist to the chorus line. Life is… well, larger than life, constantly changing costumes and starring in a variety of roles: work, finances, children, health.

You get the gist, you know what I mean. As much as you promise yourself things won’t change, they do, whether you have kids or not. Just more certainly and quicker if you have kids. And I am not implying they change for the worse, just that they are different.

There are still a lot of cuddles and horsing around, but it usually involves the children too. Kids are just incapable of watching/hearing you share a moment of laughter or tenderness without jumping right into the middle of it.

Your seemingly endless reserves of affection are more finite than you thought once your offspring, on which you reversed your supplies all day, are in bed. Instead of lying on the couch hand in hand, legs intertwined while watching a movie, you both lightly snore with your eyes half open, pretending to be awake.

Moments of intimacy are well planned and consumed behind locked doors in muffler mode. Gone are the days of spur-of-the-moment fun involving surfaces of your décor other than the bed.

I think we all at some point of a relationship (during a fight, when you reach an important milestone etc.) question how much of life together is routine, companionship or even the unthinkable, a very efficient way to rear a family or to share costs in an expensive metropolis. 

Sometimes it is so hard to see black and white, because contours have a tendency to grey with time. It is hard to tell the difference between a real feeling and the memory of it (like those childhood reminiscences you create in your mind through stories you have heard your parents tell over and over). It is hard to differentiate types of love when sex is no longer the driving factor of the equation.

But then Love, demoted to supporting role or even walk-on by the egotistic diva that is Life, has a way of creeping back when you least expect it. It waits quietly and patiently on the sidelines and then unexpectedly takes center stage for a solo that is so sweet and lovely that it is like watching your first  movie in color after owning a black and white TV.

That is how I felt this morning. Is it because he got back from a trip last night while I was asleep and waking up next to him this morning just made me happy? Is it because some sad news I heard from a friend set my mind racing, making me analyze every facet of my relationship? Is it because there has just been so much going on in our lives this winter that I realized having him with me along the way just makes it so much easier. The truth is it could be either of these reasons or all of them together or maybe none of them. I don’t know and I don’t care. All I know is that Love is the star today and that is all that matters.

Corn muffins are a little like marriage: they are every day food, not glamorous, but easily adaptable. They are a little sweet, slightly salty, moist and comforting yet with that unexpected grainy texture and bite.

The other day I brought some corn muffins to work and a couple of colleagues asked me for the recipe. I told them they could get it from the blog. As I was looking for the link to send them I realized I had never posted corn muffins! How did that happen?

I was very glad I still had a few at home to photograph.

I do not have my own special recipe for corn muffins and used this one because I didn’t have the buttermilk many recipes call for. I was actually also a little short on butter and used a couple of tablespoons of leftover coconut milk I had in the fridge. It worked fine as a substitute, and for those of you who don’t like coconut, there was not a hint of it once baked.

Sweet polenta bread. Are you a purist or not?

Let me just clarify: I am not trying to be fancy. I am not calling this recipe polenta bread instead of plain old corn bread because I want to give myself airs. The truth is I used polenta flour in it and my impression is that it is ground a little coarser than corn meal. I am however not so sure about this anymore, after some research on the Internet. There seem to be very discordant opinions. Some vouch they are exactly the same thing, others say the flour used to make polenta is coarser. Who knows? What matters is that they are pretty interchangeable and so let's just say I called it polenta bread in honor of the country I live in.

Before you read this, I apologize to all corn bread purists. I know to you corn bread is sacred and I will understand perfectly if you skip on to another post with mild annoyance. It has happened to me many a time and a few posts I read this morning got me thinking. How important is it to exactly execute a traditional recipe? Is there a right way to cook something in the world we live in today, where everything is going global and fusion is ever more popular?  In a world where food bloggers are inspiring each other to cook recipes from every corner of the planet, using new ingredients and techniques?

I started thinking about this when I commented on Taste of Beirut's new post. Joumana asked herself why she had never thought of doing something before that saved her lots of time cooking a traditional recipe. My guess is that when you have been taught to do something a certain way, it is so imprinted in your being that it is sometimes hard to think of a simple change that will be helpful and that may seem obvious to someone from another background. Then, when I read Design, Wine & Dine's new post, she mentioned substituting one ingredient for another missing one. Mind you, they are both ingredients that are very much used in that cuisine and I am sure either way, the dish is delicious. But as I read the post after my morning reflections, I couldn't help picturing a Maroccan somewhere tsssk-tsssking because this foreigner had ruined his/her mother's recipe.

Now, I live in a country where tradition is everything. Recipes have been made just so for decades, even centuries. In Italy you cannot even speak of regional cuisine, it is more a local cuisine. I have read endless debates on whether pumpkin ravioli should be made with or without adding amaretto cookie crumbs to the filling. These ravioli are typical of the Mantua area (even this may raise a debate...) and if you move just a few kms north or south the dogma changes. It basically boils down to how your nonna made them. That is the recipe, the only way to make something here.

I think I have already mentioned how Italian men will sit at a restaurant eating a plate of pasta and dissect the recipe, comparing what each of their mothers used when making the same dish. Whole meals are spent talking about food. That is why often it is said that Italian cuisine is one of the best in the world, but that it is a touch too traditional, static. Many of you Italian readers right now are probably thinking your food is so good that there is no need to change it, right?
The complete opposite example is Australia, with its everchanging, innovative cuisine influenced by a variety of cultures and ingredients. It is a reasonably young country and as all things young, it is more open to change.

I will admit to cringing or feeling a little snooty at times when I read how someone cooks a risotto or ruins something as simple as a Caprese. I mean, certain techniques or ingredients were chosen because after years of experimenting they turned out to be the best possible choice for that dish. If something has a name, like the above mentioned Caprese, then why make it with avocado and still call it a Caprese? We all feel that when someone goes and violates something that is a part of our history, our heritage or even simply our family tradition, something we have eaten countless times made that way by someone we love, it is wrong. But then we feel equally free to play around and experiment with recipes from other countries by adding, adjusting or substituting ingredients.

The truth is that sometimes a person with a different cooking experience has a new and fresh take on things and they can teach us that change is not a bad thing. More often than not, change is positive and it is only by experimenting and trying that we can come up with something new and perhaps outstanding.

What do you think? Are you a purist or do you like to be adventurous?

This polenta bread is a sweet version of your typical corn bread. It is perfect with a cup of tea or coffee. You can eat it on its own or spread it with jam. It has a wonderful crumb and is rich and moist. I substituted the cup of milk in the original recipe I found on About.com with 1 cup of ricotta and a 1/3 cup of cream I had in the fridge. I also used olive oil instead of canola oil. I used up all the open dairy products in my fridge and came up with a perfect breakfast.