Polenta is so Easy!
I love to watch cooking shows on television. I love the way they present food and make it look so elegant and delicious. I would really like to be a judge on the competition shows where they present cuisine from all over the world, new tastes and smells, elegantly plated with some exotic sauce drizzled over it. MMMMMM.......Polenta was something I first discovered while watching a cooking show. Many of the television cooking personalities, for some reason, have an Italian background. Polenta was often featured on these shows, usually in a congealed and sliced presentation. I thought it was some highly complicated, sophisticated expensive food that I would probably never attempt.
After I had been watching foodie shows for awhile and reading cook books regularly, (I know ...it's weird.) I realized that it was a very simple food item that appeared in most national cuisines. It might be called corn mush here in the south, it might form the inside of a tamale, it might be elegantly buttered like mashed potatoes, or it could be sliced in perfect yellow rounds like the Italian chefs I mentioned. Most very familiar dishes in all cultures usually started by necessity in the homes of common people. If all you had left in the house was corn meal and water, what would you feed your family at dinner? Voila! Polenta.
Most polenta recipes in books or online will scare you to death with recipes that sound so much more complicated that cooking some corn meal in some water, but it is really so easy. I use my rice cooker, which I do for almost everything I do! ( I would bathe the dog in it if he would fit. )
Polenta in the Rice Cooker
Ingredients:
Water: Three cups
Yellow Corn meal: One cup
Oil ( any kind)
few tablespoons
Salt, pepper,
1/2 tablespoon onion powder,
1 tablespoon dried parsley
I put butter on the top and a little grated Parmesan, sometimes.
|
|