Polenta

Ok, so the ingredient is in for this week and it is POLENTA. I have cooked polenta before but I must admit I do not know a lot about its origins, so off to do some research!

Polenta is basically ground cornmeal and can be ground coarsely or fine. My previous experience with it had been from an Italian angle, boiled into a smooth porridge-like consistency with butter, Parmesan and seasoning added. I had used it like a starch such as potatoes or rice and served alongside something else, such as a stew.

I did some reading and what was opened up to me was that corn meal, and similar products that are made from corn, form the staples for countries all around the world in a similar way that rice does in Asia.

In the USA when the corn is ground and passed through the screens, the finer part that comes through is cornmeal and the coarser remains form grits. Grits is a staple dish in the southern states of the US and is made from boiling the ground kernels into a kind of porridge, much like polenta. Further south into Mexico, cornmeal is used to make staples like tortillas.

In Africa, corn meal forms the basis of many staple food dishes called fou fou, ugali and pap. Quite often they form this mixture into a ball and make an indentation with their thumbs and use it to dip into a stew making it a food and a utensil in one. There are many varying forms of this dish throughout Africa, but all appear quite similar.

In eastern European countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Hungary, polenta is usually prepared in a special pot called a ceaun or tuci. It is prepared in a thick consistency and can be cut into slices and is served with varying types of cheese and sometimes sausage, or even sweet polenta will be served broken up into a bowl of hot milk which is a favourite among children.

In Italy, Polenta is often cooked in a copper pot called a paiolo. It is traditionally a northern Italian peasant dish and while the Italians in the south ate pasta, in the north, it was polenta. Some classic Italian dishes that use polenta are polenta taragna, polenta uncia, polenta concia, polenta e gorgonzola, and missultin e polenta. It is often cooked with cheese or can also be served with stews, such as slow cooked Osso Bucco. It has even made its way into Brazil as a result of northern Italian migration.

OK, so that has not helped narrow down my meal choices at all, but has definitely given me some food for thought (bad pun intended). I am definitely going to make an Italian-inspired dish, and I think a southern US/Mexican-inspired dish. I may even have a go at an eastern European version if I have time. You can make some sweet foods with Polenta as well, but I will steer clear from them this time. OK, I'm off to do some brainstorming. I will be back with dish number one...