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Italian Polenta
The Italians appreciate the value of cheese as an every-day article of food and have a number of delightful ways of preparing it. This is an excellent every-day dish. Make a thick mush of corn-meal, seasoning it highly with salt and plenty of black pepper. Cook over hot water for an hour. Then for each pint of the mush stir in 1 cupful of grated cheese, the ordinary kind found in any grocery store. Stir often until the cheese melts then turn into a greased pan.
When done cut in slices. This may be served in two ways. Cut in two inch squares and sauté quickly in a little butter or spread on a buttered pan; sprinkle thickly with cheese, add a second layer and sprinkle again, this time with cheese mixed with buttered crumbs. Place in a hot oven until slightly browned.
A frugal cheese-and-cornmeal dish that assumes you know how thick "a thick mush" should be. The two finishing methods are separate dishes, and both depend on the polenta being fully cold and firm before it is cut.
- Proportions for the mushThe recipe gives none. For a polenta stiff enough to slice, use about 4 parts water or milk to 1 part cornmeal by volume — roughly 1 cup medium-grind cornmeal to 4 cups liquid, whisked in gradually so it does not lump.
- "Cook over hot water"This means a double boiler, not direct heat, which is why the time is an hour. Over direct heat with regular stirring, medium-grind cornmeal is done in 30 to 40 minutes; instant polenta in about 5, though the texture is coarser.
- The cheese"the ordinary kind found in any grocery store" most likely points to a plain American factory cheddar rather than imported Parmesan. Grated sharp cheddar gives something close to the intended result; Parmesan or pecorino will taste more Italian but seasons more aggressively, so cut the salt.
- Cool it completely"When done cut in slices" skips the important part: the pan of polenta must chill until firm, at least 2 hours and preferably overnight, or it will smear rather than slice. A loaf pan or quarter-sheet pan about 3/4 inch deep works well.
- A hot oven425 to 450F. The layered version needs only 15 to 20 minutes at that heat — long enough to melt the cheese and brown the crumb topping, since everything in the dish is already cooked.
- Two dishes, not oneThe first option is squares fried in butter, served as they are. The second is a gratin: sliced polenta layered with grated cheese, topped with cheese and buttered crumbs, and baked. Do not try to combine them.
- Season hard"Highly with salt and plenty of black pepper" is not exaggeration. Cornmeal absorbs salt and reads bland when underseasoned; taste the mush before the cheese goes in, when you can still correct it.
- YieldA batch from 1 cup of cornmeal fills an 8-inch square pan and serves four as a main dish with a vegetable, six as a side.
Polenta is the northern Italian cousin of every other boiled-grain porridge, made from maize only after the crop reached Europe from the Americas; before that the same name covered mushes of buckwheat, millet and chestnut flour. The technique of pouring the cooked mush into a pan, letting it set, then slicing and frying or baking it is thoroughly traditional in the Veneto and Lombardy, where cold polenta was standard peasant fare and the fried slices a way of using yesterday's pot. What makes this version an American cookbook entry rather than an Italian one is the cheese: the writer sends you to the grocery for whatever is on hand, which in practice meant factory cheddar. Books of low-cost cookery leaned on cheese constantly as a cheap source of protein, and cornmeal was long associated in the United States with poverty and animal feed.