It was an evening of reflection, a quick dinner, a nap, and then a moonlight walk until midnight. What was dinner? Some spontaneous improvised polenta squares. It’s been a while since we’ve been to the kitchen on Asymptotia, so come along…
Take some of the coarse ground cornmeal that’s great for making polenta (or tasty breakfast porridge, for that matter), and sprinkle it into some water, stirring immediately. Only then do you bring the water up to a boil, on a low flame. Putting the meal into hot water will make a lumpy mess. How much water to how much meal?
To be honest, I don’t really measure this. Just… enough. I use a small 5 inch shallow saucepan about 1/2 full of water, and two heaped large spoons of meal…. So maybe 3 cups water, 1 cup or a bit more of meal? Does not matter too much, as you can evaporate off a lot of the water if you have excess (not too much excess though – don’t want to over cook) later. Then I went to the mortar and pestle and ground two cloves of garlic, some black pepper, and a sprig of chopped rosemary from the garden. All that went into the pan, along with salt. You’ve got to keep stirring as the boiling comes in, or you’ll get lumps. Keep stirring while it boils, and get that extra moisture out, letting it cook down into a thick paste, almost sticking in the pan, and your spoon can stand up in it. Make sure it had enough boiling to soften and cook the corn… but not so much water and cooking that it makes a mush.
Then get your favourite skillet or griddle pan up to highish heat with some olive oil in it, turn the paste out into it, flatten and shape to your preferences, and fry a bit until nice and brown on each side.
Serve with some nice complementary colour on the side. Eat. Some small snaps:
Note that you can add all sorts of things into the paste at the final stirring stage… Anything really. Cheese adds a good background flavour… you can chop up some cooked string beans and add them, for texture…. or some actual whole kernels of corn, for a range of contrasting corn textures. Small bit of meat of your choice can be added too (chopped sausage of some sort?) It’s all up to you. Takes no time and is super tasty.
-cvj
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Great recipes. I love eating some food with polenta instead of bread. Thanks. As a tip try sarmalute with polenta.
Definitely worth trying… In that case I’d roast, instead of frying.
-cvj
no eggplant? (Bacaro-style)
Thank you for the reminder that polenta (cornmeal) is versatile and not just for tasty cornmeal porridge which Zachary now thoroughly enjoys (and is not into oats for breakfast as a result). We will try something like this on Saturday.
We do know what Mitch means – as our mum is just as bad but I did not inherit the measurement gene! cmj+
Yes, it is good to get Scrapple from the Apple. Or at least closer to it than LA county, one imagines. 😉
-cvj
This is not so different from fried mush, which we had from time to time for breakfast when I was a kid on Staten Island, sixty and more years ago. Ours was totally unflavored, though, and really rather bland till it was sweetened up with syrup. But we would always reject plain mush if there was an opportunity for the fortified and highly seasoned version of mush called scrapple. Unfortunately, here in benighted Los Angeles County, scrapple never seems to show up in the stores.
Mmmmmm! I do enjoy Asymptotia’s visits to the kitchen! Polenta always brings back great memories for me of work trips to Romania where I had some truly wonderful meals with my Romanian friends and colleagues. These feasts (and that is the appropriate word) usually featured polenta (mamaliga). Your post has reminded me that I have some polenta in my food cupboard. I got it for my young son to try as he’s on a pretty restricted diet for medical reasons. I thought it might be a good option for him, and as you say there are some great ways to flavour polenta. I shall enjoy trying out some polenta dishes in the near future, inspired by your post. Thank you!
“To be honest, I don’t really measure this.”
Funny, whenever I ask my mom for a recipe over the phone we always run into the problem of me wanting to know exactly how many cups to put in and her knowing that you need to put enough to where it is runny, but not too runny. Makes it tough for those who weren’t born with the intuitive cooking gene, or more likely, haven’t put in the hours in the kitchen to be able to do it by feel. Lovely looking meal!
Looks yummy. I’ll have to try this soon.
e.