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Polenta Pie
(Polenta Pasticciata) Make a very stiff mush of cornmeal cooked in milk. Salt it well and spread out on the bread board in a sheet about one inch thick. When cold, cut in little diamonds or squares and place these in a buttered baking dish. Prepare the Bolognese souce according to the following recipe: Chop 1/4 lb. round steak, a slice of pork or bacon, one small carrot 1/4 onion, one large piece celery.
Put the meat and vegetables over the fire with a piece of butter. When the meat has browned add half a tablespoon of flour and wet the mixture with hot water or broth, allowing it to simmer from half an hour to an hour. It is done when it is the consistency of a thick gravy.
Make a smooth white sauce with milk cornstarch and butter. Over a layer of the polenta, cut as above and placed in the baking dish sprinkle some grated cheese and a few tablespoons each of the white sauce and the meat sauce. Repeat until the dish is full. Bake until the top is nicely browned. This dish seems very elaborate, but it is very delicious and a meal in itself.
The Bolognese sauce is also used to season macaroni or spaghetti in lieu of the tomato sauce or the brown stock. 38
A layered polenta bake in the Emilian manner, with ragù and besciamella standing in for tomato sauce. The recipe assumes you know the proportions for polenta and white sauce, so those are the gaps to fill.
- The polenta itselfFor a very stiff mush, figure roughly 1 cup coarse cornmeal to 4 cups milk (or half milk, half water), stirred over low heat 30-40 minutes until it pulls from the sides of the pan. Instant polenta will work in 5 minutes but sets softer; add a little less liquid if you use it.
- Spread and cool fullyAn inch is thicker than most modern polenta slabs and it needs to be genuinely cold and firm before cutting, ideally several hours or overnight in the refrigerator. Warm polenta will smear rather than cut into clean diamonds.
- "Chop" means minceThe steak, pork and vegetables should be chopped fine by hand or pulsed briefly, not ground to paste. This is a soffritto-based ragù, and the vegetables should melt into the sauce over the hour.
- Simmer timeHalf an hour is the minimum; an hour or more gives a far better sauce. Keep it at a bare simmer and add hot broth in small amounts as it tightens, so it stays loose enough to spoon between layers.
- The white sauceThe recipe calls for cornstarch rather than flour. About 1 tablespoon cornstarch and 2 tablespoons butter to 1 cup milk gives a pourable besciamella; season with salt and a scrape of nutmeg, which the recipe leaves out.
- Cheese'Grated cheese' is unspecified; a hard grating cheese of the Parmesan type suits the dish. Roughly 3/4 cup total across the layers is enough; more makes the dish greasy against the two sauces.
- Oven and timingBake at 375F for 30-40 minutes, until bubbling at the edges and browned on top. If the assembled dish has gone cold, allow closer to an hour.
- YieldAs written this fills a 9-inch square or similar 2-quart dish and serves four as the "meal in itself" the author intends. Let it settle 10 minutes before cutting or the layers slump.
Polenta pasticciata — literally polenta "made into a mess" or pie — belongs to the northern Italian table, where cornmeal has been a staple since maize spread through the Veneto and Lombardy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Leftover polenta, sliced and layered with whatever sauce and cheese the house had, is the frugal ancestor of this dish; the addition of both a meat ragù and a besciamella is the Emilian refinement, the same pairing that defines lasagne alla bolognese. The closing note that the Bolognese sauce also dresses macaroni or spaghetti "in lieu of the tomato sauce" is a useful reminder that ragù was understood as a meat gravy first, and that the tomato-forward American idea of Italian sauce was still taking shape.