Polenta: Trendy dish was first a fad for the poor
You can go to a fancy store and buy a fancy 24-ounce bag of cornmeal for polenta, and it will cost you $3.99.
I think that’s hilarious.
In recent years, chefs at many of the best restaurants have discovered polenta, though the fad is dying down a bit. But it is easy to understand why it is so popular. Properly made, polenta is smooth, creamy and astonishingly versatile.
It’s also cheap. Polenta is what poor Italian families used to cook at the end of the month, when money was tight. You could make a great meal — and you know Italians are all about their great meals — for literally pennies (or a few lire).
What Italians know as polenta, Americans call grits. It’s just cornmeal. It doesn’t have to cost $3.99. The same amount of Quaker Yellow Cornmeal costs $2.19. I was going to be using a lot, so I bought a 5-pound bag of Aunt Jemima’s Cornmeal for $3.29. That’s about 4 cents per serving.
Admittedly, even at 16 cents per serving, the expensive stuff is still pretty cheap.
Polenta can be transcendently delicious if you make it right, but making it right takes time and dedication. Basically, you have to stir. And stir. And stir.
But it is unquestionably worth the effort. If you’ve never had polenta that is perfectly smooth, like corn-flavored satin, you’ve never really had polenta.
I learned the method for extraordinary polenta from “The Silver Spoon,” which is more or less the Italian version of “The Joy of Cooking” — it’s massive, comprehensive and is the most successful cookbook in Italian history.
“The Silver Spoon” method for cooking polenta calls for two pots of boiling, salted water. Into one, you slowly drizzle the cornmeal, stirring all the while. When the polenta in that pot starts to get too thick to stir, you add a ladle of boiling water from the other pot. Stir and add water. Stir and add water. And keep it up for 45 minutes to 1 hour until the corn has no raw taste whatsoever and the polenta is so smooth and creamy you almost can’t tell it has grains in it.
That’s the way I’ve made polenta ever since I bought the English translation of the book several years ago, and the results have been spectacular.
This soup recipe doesn’t need all the time-consuming stirring. You simply saute onions, stir in some cornmeal and add warm milk and water.
Cook it for an hour, stirring occasionally, and you end up with something transformative.
It is a hearty, filling soup, thick and satisfying, that tastes like onion-kissed corn. When you come in from a cold day, it is exactly what you will want.
It also costs about $1.63 for a generous serving. Of course, you could also go to a fancy restaurant and pay 15 bucks for it. And it would be worth it.
POLENTA SOUP
Adapted from “The Silver Spoon.”
6 tablespoons butter, divided
1 onion, chopped
1 quart (4 cups) milk
2 1/4 cups water
1 1/4 cups coarse polenta flour (cornmeal)
Salt and pepper
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1. Melt 3 tablespoons of the butter in a large pan, add the onion and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, mix together the milk and water in another pan and bring to just below simmering point, then remove from the heat.
2. Stir the polenta flour into the onion and cook, stirring continuously, for 2 to 3 minutes. Gradually stir in the warm milk and water. Season with salt and pepper to taste and cook for 1 hour. Stir in the cream, the remaining 3 tablespoons butter and the Parmesan cheese, and serve.
Per serving: 663 calories; 41 g fat; 25 g saturated fat; 121 mg cholesterol; 18 g protein; 55 g carbohydrate; 15 g sugar; 3 g fiber; 378 mg sodium; 515 mg calcium.
Yield: 4 servings
This story was originally published November 30, 2015 at 4:01 PM with the headline "Polenta: Trendy dish was first a fad for the poor."