A Traditional Italian Favorite
Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 04:00AM 
In old Italy polenta was a staple in every kitchen and the equivalent of a serving of bread. In China the staple is rice. In Mexico, it’s the tortilla, and so on. Every country has its own starch or carbohydrate that was usually made from an ingredient grown or readily available in the area. In Italy it must have been corn.
My mother took me to Italy in the early 1960’s to meet my relatives. My grandmother and cousins lived in the northern region of Italy. My grandmother made her polenta first thing in the morning. She usually had some for breakfast while it was still hot with a little milk and sugar or cinnamon—much like the grits in our southern states. Across town, my Aunt Ines made a fresh polenta for their noon meal and served it with Italian cold cuts of salami, mortadella, prosciutto or sorpressata. She also had a selection of Italian cheeses that tasted so much better than anything I had ever had back in California. Sometimes she also made a hot stew and we had that for lunch.
Here in America, my mother usually served it hot for dinner with one of her wonderful dishes. I can’t even begin to name them all because there were so many. They ranged from roast pork with rosemary, sweetbreads with cinnamon, stewed tripe with tomatoes, chicken stew with mushrooms, escargot with spinach, and even tuna in tomato and herb sauce. Most of her dishes also included parsley, onions, garlic and white wine. They all were delicious alone, but even better with some crusty French bread for sopping up the gravy.
However, it was always a big dinner highlight if mom cooked a polenta and turned it out on a wooden serving board placed in the center of the table. After the steam subsided a little, she cut big slabs from four sides for our family servings. None of us ever left that table hungry!
I make polenta every few weeks—more in the fall and winter than in warm weather. I take a short cut and use the quickest recipe I know. It’s from my Aunt Rina’s San Francisco Italian Federation cookbook. I’m sure one of the Italian members of the club came up with the recipe one day when she was just too tired to stand in front of the stove and stir the polenta for thirty minutes. Mom always made the stovetop recipe, and so did my cousin Ellen in Santa Barbara. Her husband, Cousin Fred, just liked it better that way. I really can’t tell the difference.
To each his own, so if you like polenta, try it both ways to determine your favorite.
Oven Polenta
1 C corn meal (I use Albers fat-free cornmeal)
3 C cold water
4 T cold unsalted butter
1 t salt
Combine all the ingredients in a glass baking dish with a lid. If you are using a Pyrex dish with no lid, then cover the dish with aluminum foil. Place the dish in a cold oven.
Turn the oven on to 350º and bake it for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
You can serve it up hot. I usually bake it in the mornings to get it out of the way, and then heat up a serving for dinner and refrigerate the leftover. Any leftovers can be sliced and toasted in a 400º oven for a few minutes, or warmed in the microwave. Try a slice the next day with some cheese or salami on top. It makes a great lunch.
The original recipe says it serves two. However, I’d say that the two servings would be quite large, and at our house it serves more like four, and even six.
(Note: You can add more butter or some grated Parmesan cheese for a richer polenta. As I recall, my relatives in Italy only made it with the three basic ingredients—cornmeal, water and salt. The dish they served with it was usually buttery and rich enough that the polenta could stand alone.)
Enjoy!
© Pauline Boren 2009
Italian Staple, Polenta in Regional Bread 
