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• Polenta, parmesan, and prosciutto spoon breads,

I know people who eat spoon bread with butter, as if it were plain cornbread, which it is not. It's rich a custardy breadlike food eaten the South. I first had it at the Hotel Roanoke, in Roanoke, Va., as a kid, and never forgot it. This, however, is spoonbread as I imagine Italians might make it if they lived in the South. I used Bob's but I'd rather have Anson Mills fine ground, because I like the finer texture of softer white cornmeal, which is what spoon bread is all about, but it still has the nice corny polenta flavor. I used Andrew Carmellini's Urban Italian as my guide in cooking the polenta (although he cooks his for TWO hours, and is compulsive about clean), then took it from there. You can cook these in a casserole, but don't do it in a large shallow one. The spoon bread should be puffed and browned at the edges but slumped in the middle. The pancetta and parmesan layer gets broiled at the end to ramp up the flavor.

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