senior citizen
04-14-2014, 05:31 AM
As a child, this was a favorite "comfort food", either freshly prepared as below, or after it chills, cut into wedges & gently sauteed in butter or olive oil. Also, grilling works well; see below.........we all called it polenta, but other folks might recognize it as cornmeal "mush". We ate the polenta warm and creamy with a pat of butter , or chilled and hardened...cut into wedges and fried or sautéed; served with marinara sauce or plain. A blast from the past.
Creamy Polenta Recipe (History Trivia below the two recipes)
Polenta is a traditional side dish both in southern and northern Italy. It's made by simmering coarsely ground corn meal until the natural starches are released, making it wonderfully creamy and satisfying.
You could make polenta using plain water, but water doesn't have any flavor, so stock is a much better choice. Chicken stock is great for making polenta. But for the best polenta you ever tasted, simmer a ham hock for a couple of hours and use the resulting liquid to make your polenta.
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Ingredients:
1 cup polenta
3 cups water or white stock (chicken stock or ham stock) I prefer chicken broth.
4 Tbsp butter
salt, to taste
Preparation:
In a heavy-bottomed soup pot, bring the cooking liquid to a boil. Slowly whisk in the polenta and lower heat to a very low simmer.
Cook for about 30 minutes, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon. The polenta should bubble thickly like molten lava during this time. If the polenta starts to clump up, add water (about ½ cup at a time) to thin it out.
Stir in butter. The final consistency should be thick and creamy but not clumpy. Adjust consistency with additional water if necessary.
Season to taste with salt and serve right away.
Grilled Polenta Recipe
Preparing polenta on the grill gives it a wonderful crispy exterior.
For grilled polenta, simply prepare a batch of regular polenta, let it cool in a loaf pan, then slice and grill it. (or chill it, slice it and saute it in frying pan)
Ingredients:
4 cups cooked polenta
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Preparation:
Prepare one batch of creamy polenta (as above).
Pour warm polenta into a glass loaf pan. Smooth the top, cover and refrigerate until set, a few hours or up to overnight.
Turn the polenta onto a cutting board. It should be completely molded into the shape of your loaf pan. Cut into ½-inch slices and brush each one with olive oil on both sides.
Heat a grill pan until it is quite hot. If using a gas grill, which is likely to get much hotter than a grill pan, a medium-high setting should be enough.
Place each slice diagonally across the grill and let it cook for about 10 minutes or until dark-brown grill marks appear. Don't move the polenta around, though, or you'll disturb the browning process. Also, don't overcrowd the pan. Work in batches if necessary.
Flip and grill the other side until grill marks appear, about another 10 minutes. Serve hot.
************************************************** ***************
Some trivia on the history of polenta.......one of my favorite comfort foods as a child.
""""Polenta (Polente or Poleinte in France) is cornmeal boiled into a porridge and eaten directly or baked, fried or grilled. When cooked, it has a warm soft inside with a crunchy outside. The term is of Italian origin, derived from the Latin for hulle and crushed grain. Maize was not cultivated in Europe until the early 16th century.
As it is known today, polenta derives from earlier forms of grain mush (known as puls or pulmentum in Latin or more commonly as gruel or porridge), commonly eaten since Roman times, introduced to the New World after the 16th century.
Historically, polenta was served as a peasant food in North America and Europe.
In the 1940s and 1950s, polenta was often eaten with salted anchovy, sometimes topped with sauces (like marinara sauce).
The variety of cereal used is usually yellow maize.
Cooked polenta can be shaped into balls, patties, or sticks, and then fried in oil, baked, or grilled until golden brown; fried polenta is called crostini di polenta or polenta fritta. This type of polenta became particularly popular in southern Brazil following northern Italian immigration. """""
Ditto for Buenos Aires Argentina which is where my grandfather's brother went with his family after the quota was up for Ellis Island/New York City in the mid to late1800's......very interesting the way his name evolved from Laurenzana Italy to a small cattle ranch on the outskirts of Buenos Aires........Michele Angelo to Miguel Angel.
Just a bit of trivia, but his great great grand daughter, a peer my son's age, contacted me after sending for the Laurenzana records and tracing all of us, just as I had traced them. Small world, thanks to the internet. I now have photos of my grandfather's brother and all of his children, circa 1944, in Buenos Aires Argentina. Born Italian, his grandchildren were born in a Spanish speaking country.
Had he been able to join his brothers Frank (Francesco) and Rocco in N.Y.C., he would today be remembered as Michael Angelo........but genealogy is a story for another day.
Creamy Polenta Recipe (History Trivia below the two recipes)
Polenta is a traditional side dish both in southern and northern Italy. It's made by simmering coarsely ground corn meal until the natural starches are released, making it wonderfully creamy and satisfying.
You could make polenta using plain water, but water doesn't have any flavor, so stock is a much better choice. Chicken stock is great for making polenta. But for the best polenta you ever tasted, simmer a ham hock for a couple of hours and use the resulting liquid to make your polenta.
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Ingredients:
1 cup polenta
3 cups water or white stock (chicken stock or ham stock) I prefer chicken broth.
4 Tbsp butter
salt, to taste
Preparation:
In a heavy-bottomed soup pot, bring the cooking liquid to a boil. Slowly whisk in the polenta and lower heat to a very low simmer.
Cook for about 30 minutes, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon. The polenta should bubble thickly like molten lava during this time. If the polenta starts to clump up, add water (about ½ cup at a time) to thin it out.
Stir in butter. The final consistency should be thick and creamy but not clumpy. Adjust consistency with additional water if necessary.
Season to taste with salt and serve right away.
Grilled Polenta Recipe
Preparing polenta on the grill gives it a wonderful crispy exterior.
For grilled polenta, simply prepare a batch of regular polenta, let it cool in a loaf pan, then slice and grill it. (or chill it, slice it and saute it in frying pan)
Ingredients:
4 cups cooked polenta
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Preparation:
Prepare one batch of creamy polenta (as above).
Pour warm polenta into a glass loaf pan. Smooth the top, cover and refrigerate until set, a few hours or up to overnight.
Turn the polenta onto a cutting board. It should be completely molded into the shape of your loaf pan. Cut into ½-inch slices and brush each one with olive oil on both sides.
Heat a grill pan until it is quite hot. If using a gas grill, which is likely to get much hotter than a grill pan, a medium-high setting should be enough.
Place each slice diagonally across the grill and let it cook for about 10 minutes or until dark-brown grill marks appear. Don't move the polenta around, though, or you'll disturb the browning process. Also, don't overcrowd the pan. Work in batches if necessary.
Flip and grill the other side until grill marks appear, about another 10 minutes. Serve hot.
************************************************** ***************
Some trivia on the history of polenta.......one of my favorite comfort foods as a child.
""""Polenta (Polente or Poleinte in France) is cornmeal boiled into a porridge and eaten directly or baked, fried or grilled. When cooked, it has a warm soft inside with a crunchy outside. The term is of Italian origin, derived from the Latin for hulle and crushed grain. Maize was not cultivated in Europe until the early 16th century.
As it is known today, polenta derives from earlier forms of grain mush (known as puls or pulmentum in Latin or more commonly as gruel or porridge), commonly eaten since Roman times, introduced to the New World after the 16th century.
Historically, polenta was served as a peasant food in North America and Europe.
In the 1940s and 1950s, polenta was often eaten with salted anchovy, sometimes topped with sauces (like marinara sauce).
The variety of cereal used is usually yellow maize.
Cooked polenta can be shaped into balls, patties, or sticks, and then fried in oil, baked, or grilled until golden brown; fried polenta is called crostini di polenta or polenta fritta. This type of polenta became particularly popular in southern Brazil following northern Italian immigration. """""
Ditto for Buenos Aires Argentina which is where my grandfather's brother went with his family after the quota was up for Ellis Island/New York City in the mid to late1800's......very interesting the way his name evolved from Laurenzana Italy to a small cattle ranch on the outskirts of Buenos Aires........Michele Angelo to Miguel Angel.
Just a bit of trivia, but his great great grand daughter, a peer my son's age, contacted me after sending for the Laurenzana records and tracing all of us, just as I had traced them. Small world, thanks to the internet. I now have photos of my grandfather's brother and all of his children, circa 1944, in Buenos Aires Argentina. Born Italian, his grandchildren were born in a Spanish speaking country.
Had he been able to join his brothers Frank (Francesco) and Rocco in N.Y.C., he would today be remembered as Michael Angelo........but genealogy is a story for another day.