I’m always getting polenta and pancetta confused. Not the actual materials but the words. I think it was in the 1990s when I first repeatedly encountered the words. I was using pancetta in a frisée salad that I learned early in my French cooking days, and polenta was showing up on restaurant menus with increasing frequency.

Along with the polenta on menus came the lore about having to stir it slowly for a long time. When I finally went out and bought some polenta, it was an Italian brand of instant polenta that cooked up in a minute or two. The one time I decided to prepare fried polenta, I bought a plastic tube of pre-cooked polenta that I cut into disks for frying.

Then grits started showing up on menus in my area. I was familiar with grits from movies and television and from my travels in the South in the 1980s. I never gave them a try. The breakfast buffets in the hotels usually offered plain grits in a warmer, but I always was more attracted to eggs, potatoes, and sausages. I’m not sure if I’ve ever eaten cheese grits or shrimp and grits or even plain grits. So why did I decide to prepare popcorn grits?

First, I love the flavor of popcorn, but I often find it unfulfilling due to its airiness. Second, I ran across a recipe from a local restaurant where I’ve enjoyed the food. Third, I can conveniently purchase yellow popcorn kernels in bulk from the store three blocks from my house. Fourth, when I looked at the recipe I immediately thought: “Maybe I can simplify this?”