I confess I don't like polenta. I don't really hate it, but compared to pasta, rice, cooked wheat grains, potatoes, it just doesn't appeal to me that much. I don't like the smell, and I hate the way it congeals when it's no longer very hot, though I realize that after it is congealed and cooled, it can be turned into something crisp. What I dislike most are those neat rectangular blobs of bland white polenta served alongside some meat or fish dishes in northern Italy or used as a vehicle for serving miscroscopic quantities of something good (like porcini). What I didn't think was bad at all was looser yellow polenta served with rabbit and good for absorbing the sauce. Also the crispy versions described in another thread here sound not bad.
There's an Italian culture organization (Dorothea's House) in a neighboring town that offers Italian classes and has monthly cultural programs on sunday afternoons--lectures, concerts, etc. Normally people bring in homemade dishes to share during the social period after a program. Then once a year they have a program that is strictly food: a polenta festival. People bring in their polenta specialties to share. I didn't realize that many local people liked polenta. I went once just to see what it was like, and brought in some non-polenta dish to share. I found the foods served with or on top of the polenta were very good, but the polenta itself left me cold (mayeb because if was turning cold by the time I reached it).
I wonder whether I might like polenta better prepared in some more Mediterranean or south Italian way. I usually play around with food and invent my own recipes, or approximate things I've tasted on travels, without using a cookbook (lately, I'm enjoying making Turkish dishes, since I just recently returned from Turkey). But I just have not succeeded in doing anything with polenta that I really like. I've done a few things that weren't bad, like using it with lamb stew, or cooking it loose and then mixing with sauteed onions and herbs and bits of pepper, but they seemed not as good as the rice or mashed potatoes or fregola that might've been a reasonable substitute. Does anyone have any suggestions for a more "Mediterranean" way of cooking and using polenta?
Posts: 318 | Location: NJ, USA | Registered: 18 November 2003
Well, south of the Appennines Polenta is usually simply not made. By the way, if it was cold by the time you reached it is because you are not supposed to eat th poelnta dishes from the top layer to the bottom layer, it should be eaten vertically. Dig deep into the dish and grab both sauce and polenta: remeber that the sayce is not a dish served with polenta, it's there to barely give a different taste to the dish, which is the polenta ^_____=
quote:Originally posted by Alice Twain: remeber that the sayce is not a dish served with polenta, it's there to barely give a different taste to the dish, which is the polenta ^_____=
Alice, I come from a long line of Northern Italian "polenta-eaters" (Trentini) and what I enjoyed most with the polenta (or, in fact, more than the polenta itself) was the meat gravy/sauce (called "tonco") that my mother served with it. (I have no idea if that's how to spell "tonco"...maybe it's dialect. Are you familiar with "tonco"?
Posts: 871 | Location: New York City | Registered: 28 May 2003
Annie, I dread eating at my MIL's when polenta is on the menu, sauce or no sauce Anyway, you may enjoy this excerpt from an Italian cookbook describing food from the Trentino region, "In the range of humble cooking we also find two dishes which were one time very widespread: the “polmone in guazzetto” (‘lung stew’) a kind of stew flavoured with onion and tomato which was served with polenta, similar to the ‘tonco di pontesel’ which literally means ‘sugo di balcone’ (‘balcony sauce’). Small pieces of cooked meat with plenty of onion and flour to make up the quantity of sauce needed to flavour a large quantity of polenta. This sauce was nicknamed ‘de pontesel’ because it was often diluted with water from the fountains which, right up to the end of the 18th century, in the houses of the poor were found on the balconies or galleries." ...intersting history but eewwww...lung stew? `Nancy
Posts: 255 | Location: Canada | Registered: 23 July 2004
quote:Anyway, you may enjoy this excerpt from an Italian cookbook describing food from the Trentino region, "In the range of humble cooking we also find two dishes which were one time very widespread: the “polmone in guazzetto” (‘lung stew’) a kind of stew flavoured with onion and tomato which was served with polenta, similar to the ‘tonco di pontesel’ which literally means ‘sugo di balcone’ (‘balcony sauce’)" ...intersting history but eewwww...lung stew? `Nancy
Lung stew, eh? and I thought my mother cooked some pretty strange things: tripe, brains, tongue, snails , my pet bunny....oh, skip that - it's much too sad a story to tell here
Posts: 871 | Location: New York City | Registered: 28 May 2003
Alice, we may have been taking the polenta portions vertically as we should have, but still they were getting cold anyway, because it was a very large group and things had been sitting a while. The few times I liked polenta was when it was clearly taking second place to the rabbit or the stew. I guess unless my tastes change, I just may never like the stuff very much. I was just thinking ahead, so that maybe I could make something for this polenta festival that I would actually not mind eating myself. But, I guess not.
Posts: 318 | Location: NJ, USA | Registered: 18 November 2003
My favorite way to serve polenta is topped with chicken & broccoli rabe. This is really good. It's from a chatty paperback cookbook/memoir by the late Laurie Colwin called Home Cooking, A Writer in the Kitchen, which I recommend. Here is the recipe:
Cut chicken into 8 pieces. Rub with this dry marinade: 1 TBS dried thyme, 1/2TBS. black pepper, 1 tsp red pepper flakes, 2 tsp brown sugar and a pinch of ground cloves. Sprinkle it on both sides of the chicken, set aside for an hour or so. Then put it in a pan, dust it with paprika, some slivered garlic and dot with butter (!) Bake in the usual way until crisp.
Make the polenta in your favorite way. I like to do it in the oven too (since I have it on already). Scroll down to the Oven-Baked Polenta recipe that I listed sometime last winter.
Make your broccoli rabe, a pound or pound and a half. (Wash, cut off tough stem ends then steam or boil, drain and squeeze.)
Pour polenta on large platter. Arrange chicken pieces on top with all the pan juices.
Put the broccoli rabe on top of the polenta, or arranged around the edge of the platter.
After boiling it in salted water, my husband squeezes the water out, then sautes some garlic in olive oil with red pepper flakes, adds the broccoli and salts it lightly, then sautes it until it's quite soft. That's how he likes it, the way his mother makes it! The original recipe did not call for that, however. I love broccoli rabe any way it's made!
That's the way I always make it, too; but I love broccoli rabe and if other have found different good ways to make it I'd love to hear about it. - gedlin
Posts: 461 | Location: Philadelphia, PA | Registered: 11 November 2003
debp1: I did make your chicken, broccoli rabe, and polenta. My husband pronouces it "Scrumptious!!" - I agree! A bit of preparation, but then lots of time to relax with a glass of wine and the Sunday papers while it cooked. This is a keeper. Thanks! -gedlin
Posts: 461 | Location: Philadelphia, PA | Registered: 11 November 2003
quote:Originally posted by Airone verde: Does anyone have any suggestions for a more "Mediterranean" way of cooking and using polenta?
My Abruzzesi parents made polenta with sugo di carne con i pomidori or pork ragout. Use yellow cornmeal. Prepare as specified. Spread it in a THIN layer on plate. While hot, ladle over it, the sugo di carne/ ragout. I've had it with braciole in the sugo also. This is a peasant food classic preparation. In fact, it was never served individually on plates but rather was spread over a large smooth surface on the table and each person carved his/her own serving off the main source and moved it in front of them to eat.
Posts: 657 | Location: Palmyra, NJ, USA | Registered: 29 July 2003
Also, traditionally the meat in the sauce was not plentyful, therefore the single (or few) pieces of meat were placed in the middle, and the ungry perosn who go to the middle of the communal plattee got the meat. At least thus it worked in Emilia.
This is my Mediterranean recipe. I do not have exact amounts but it is easy to figure out:
1-2 medium eggplants: peal, slice, leave under salt for at least two hours, dry and fry 3-400 gram (1 tin) of chopped tomato and 1 onion: soften thinly chopped onion in e.v. olive oil, add tomato and cook covered over low fire for 10 min. Add a few leaves basil
200 gr mozzarella (real one, not the cube!) chopped
Make polenta for 4 people according to package instruction but use half water and half milk instead of only water. This gives it a milky consistency. Oil an ovenproof pan and make one inch thick layer of polenta, add eggplant, mozzarella, tomato sauce and 1-2 additional basil leaf. Continue until all ingredients are used topping with polenta, tomato sauce and a good sprinkle of Parmesan. Place in medium hot oven for 20-30 min until warmed through and deliciously crispy on top. It is YUMMY Ciao Letizia
Is white polenta the same as the grits in southern USA cooking? I particularly hate white polenta, and it seems like grits to me, though I have very little experience with either grits or white polenta.
Posts: 318 | Location: NJ, USA | Registered: 18 November 2003
White polenta? I also have very little experience with that! Talking about buckwheat polenta like in Valtellina? The big difference between northern italian and central/southern italian polenta is the thickness of the flour... In northern Italy we eat Polenta Bramata (thick flour cooked into a very thick Polenta), in Central and Southern Italy the flour is finer and the polenta more "liquid". Personally, even I'm not a big big fan of polenta, I think that butter, gorgonzola (or other creamy but tasty cheese) and parmesan mixed in the polenta in the pot after it's cooked give the best polenta!
I've had it only in the north. I couldn't stand the white kind that was cut into rectangles like jello. It had no taste and had a horrible congealed texture. I had a coarser yellow kind with rabbit that was pleasant enough. By polenta I was referring to the kind made with corn. I didn't know that the kind with wheat is called polenta. I had that at someone's house and didn't like it too much. I think I'm just not a polenta person.
Posts: 318 | Location: NJ, USA | Registered: 18 November 2003
I don't think so, In (I think) Veneto is grown a lighter colored kind of corn used to make a whitish polenta. In Valtellina "Grano saraceno" is used to make polenta taragna, which is not just the kind of polenta flour used but the whole preparation of polenta added with milk, lots of butter and bitto, or casera, or magnocca cheese. Basically, polenta can be had with anything. I just use it to replace bread (well, not on a daily basis!). Cheeses (gorgonzola, taleggio, but also fresh and slightly sour crescenza), as well as salame or pancetta, are great melted between two slices of polenta (I always make it pretty hard: I don't like mushy polenta, I want to chew on it!). You can serve it with ragù alla bolognese, roasted quails, spezzatino of many kinds (just not with potatoes), liver "alla veneziana" (with onions), chicken livers and other innards sautéed with butter and a dash of Marsala wine... The leftovers can be sliced and either grilled and eaten with savory cheeses or meats leftovers (see above), or cut in cubes and dipped in cool milk, or fried and dusted with sugar.
Also, Airone, Polenta can be made with any kind of flour, since it generally means flour cooked with little water into a softer or thougher texture. it's probably one of the most ancient dishes in the world. it's also made with chestnut flour!
Alice, I think I've seen the whitish polenta too but I really didn't think it was so well known. The "Grano Saraceno" (buckwheat) really is not a wheat... but another kind of grain. I think that the point with polenta like any other simple food is that it needs to be well done and good quality (think at some so called bread...). Than you can surely not be a polenta person and that's that!
Slow Travel Talk 
, my pet bunny....oh, skip that - it's much too sad a story to tell here 
