I love polenta, and so do my kids. It’s a quick and easy dish that lends itself to different variations for any meal of the day – I make it for breakfast or sometimes lunch. If you buy it in the ready made rolls in the store, it’s expensive, especially since it’s considered a specialty Italian food, but it’s cheap and simple to make on your own.
- 1 c. coarse cornmeal (the texture is important, otherwise you’ll end up with cornmeal mush – you can get it in the bulk section of health food stores or in regular grocery stores in the Spanish food section – I buy the 2 lb package from Goya)
- 1 c. cold water
- 1 t. salt
- 3 c. hot water
Combine the cornmeal and cold water in a bowl – this is to keep it from clumping up in the next step (though my kids were disappointed when I learned this and there weren’t any clumps in the polenta – “but we liked the lumps!”). In a pot, combine the salt and hot water, and bring to a boil. Stir in the cornmeal mix and bring to a boil. Continue stirring; after it boils, reduce heat to low. Simmer ten minutes, then serve.
I add butter to this after it’s done – not while it’s cooking, because the boiling cornmeal bubbles furiously (I once heard it described as ‘volcanically’ :)) and if there was oil in it, it would be a painful burn if any ended up splattering your hand. I also like to do things the fastest way possible, so I boil the salt and water, and cook the cornmeal at a high temperature until it’s finished, stirring all the time. Oh, the best spoon to use when stirring this would be a long handled wooden spoon. I don’t lower the heat or simmer it at all.
The way I serve this for breakfast is in bowls, with some butter, and sometimes shredded cheese. I used to sometimes have grits for breakfast as a kid which was similar to this; I loved it then, and I still like it! You can also put it in a pan to cool. It will congeal into the shape of the pan. This is how the ready made polenta is sold, in congealed round rolls (the shape of sausage). Once it’s cold, you slice it, and can fry it, bake it with toppings, roast it – there are lots of options. You can use it as a base for a lot of things, like a tomato sauce with cheese or browned ground meat or roasted veggies on top. I once was out of lasagna noodles, so I made poured a thin layer of hot polenta into two pans, and let them cool. Then I used each layer in place of noodles. It didn’t taste like typical lasagna, but it was tasty and showed me how flexible and creative you can be with polenta.
I have yet to successfully adapt this to the traditional foods approach I usually use when cooking – cornmeal should really be soaked ahead of time with lime (necessary to release the niconitinamide – vitamin B3, which otherwise stays bound up with the corn), similar to how grains like oats should be soaked in an acidic medium like whey. If I have time before I go to bed tonight I’ll try it and see how it works tomorrow – the lime will definitely affect the flavor, so I’ll have to see how the kids like it. I haven’t made doing this a priority since we don’t have a corn based diet, so avoiding pellagra (disease of vitamin B3 deficiency) hasn’t been a major concern.
The recipe above makes about four cups of polenta; we usually triple or quadruple it for a meal.
Avivah
