A recipe for polenta in a pinch
For when pasta just won't do.
When feeding vegetarians and people who are gluten-intolerant, one must try to avoid the easy meal fallback: pasta. Yet when searching for a quick go-to, it’s often the first thought that comes to mind; oh, I have x, y and z and all of that can mix together on a base of penne. The recent years of my culinary life, however, have been so much fuller as I’ve explored the many other grains the world has to offer, one of which is polenta.
I started making polenta late; I assume a bag came into my life somehow and I needed to figure out how to use it? It was definitely when I was plumbing the depths of How to Cook Everything post-college, the period of time when Mark Bittman also introduced me to the magic of lentils. In recent years, I’ve gotten into it again because it’s such a good cold weather food, a particularly nice base for mushrooms, sausage and greens. Which is all what I threw on top when presented with a gluten-intolerant guest coming to dinner.
Polenta is not exactly rocket science; the hardest part is making sure it doesn’t bubble too much and burn you, or stick to the bottom. I actually often find that recipes overstate how long it takes to cook; maybe they’re assuming a different grain base than what’s usually stocked in grocery stores? Or maybe it’s just that the grind can vary so much. (Someone who’s an expert in such things feel free to weigh in.) This recipe was about as close to what I’d do if I hadn’t been presented with one, though I added a little more because there were, as usual, no instructions for how many people this fed, and I was feeding five, aka one more than four, the usual recipe go-to.
The first mistake I made was adding the olive oil before I brought the polenta to a boil. Did this drastically change the recipe? I can’t say that it did. Otherwise, I (of course), made some adaptations, adding a lot of butter and parmesan cheese at the end of its cook time. In the meantime, in a separate cast iron, I made my go-to: sausages from last summer’s hot dog party (a mix of kielbasa and something else). Once those had rendered some fat and gotten brown—but not burned, which I’ve learned the hard way can happen quickly in a cast iron on an electric stove—I removed them and set them aside, and cooked some mushrooms and onions until those were brown. Then I added some wilted kale (I should have asked for a discount on it at the store)—all salted well, of course, with some olive oil. Then I let that all cook down. I added back the sausages to let them marry together and we were ready to plate.
Each person got more parm and parsley on top and damn if this wasn’t a great end of winter meal. You’ll see here that there were instructions for how to bake it as well—and yes, there is yet another recipe on top of that for Oven-baked Polenta in the cookbook, to be tackled, I assume, at another date.
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