Cornmeal

Sand until fat gets into it. Toasted in butter the grit goes sweet and stops being dust.

Fine yellow meal beaten into milk and baked: the middle sets to custard, the top to cake.

Corn is only mildly sweet. Sugar drags that forward and the meal keeps the crumb sandy.

Dusted and pan-fried, a coarse coating is the coastal answer to a fish this fatty.

Whipped whites are the only lift a grain with no gluten is ever going to get.

Toasted in the rendered fat until every grain is loose and gold. Cassava has no monopoly.

Steamed through the meal, then pressed into a ring mould and turned out cold.

Steamed meal, cold coconut milk poured over at the table. Breakfast across the Northeast.

Soak first, dredge second. The acid clings so the meal has something to hold onto.

Oily tinned fish through steamed corn, with olives and egg. São Paulo has never apologised.

A pinch of anise seed in the batter is what keeps a corn cake from tasting like breakfast.

Sliced wet, tossed in dry meal, fried. The coating drinks the slime before the pan sees it.

Salt and sharpness go into the batter, not onto it. Minas would use its own cheese here.

The cake exists to be eaten beside it: bitter roast against sandy corn sugar, at four.

Cubes of the paste dropped into the batter sink and melt. Sour fruit, flat corn sweetness.

Buttermilk, then coarse meal, then hot fat. The brine stays liquid behind a sandy crust.

Toasted corn and roasted bean both land bitter-sweet. Bake them together and salt it hard.

Winey Minas fruit against a Minas corn cake. The black skin cuts the sand off the crumb.