Properly Back and on Track

Hello, and I wish you all the happiest of a new year. I hope that you all get rid of the extra padding that you have aquired over the festivities, unless you got a boob job, then I hope that they stay pointing the way that you paid for them to point.

So back to business, back to food!

My laziness over the Christmas and New Year meant that I took photos of people and not food. Ahh well, I'm sure that you don't all want to see the pictures of comedy Christmas presents, and comedic pictures of Christmas drinking. Needless to say, I am still making small trips to the bottle bank. Next year I WILL buy cans because Dublin City Council has a recycling scheme that will pick up cans, but not glass, or plastics for that matter.

Anyway! Cooking thought the book.

I made Polenta, Page 278 in Fields of Greens.

Now Polenta is new to me, I've always been a bit aware of it, but I've never eaten it, and never really seen it, so I am flying blind here.

I spoke to an Italian friend of mine about what to do with Polenta. Her advice was that it is very demanding visually, meaning that you shouldn't take your eye off it. And to put something really tatsy with it, because it is quite bland.

Now the recipe goes as such:-
6 cups water
1 and a half teaspoons salt
1 and a half cups coarse cornmeal
Quarter teaspoon pepper
2 Tablespoons butter
Half a cup Grated Parmesan

Now what you do is this.

Boil the water, until it is at a nice rolling boil, and whisk in the cornmeal. Add salt and keep on a low boil for 20-25 minutes stirring frequently until the grains are open and the Polenta is smooth.

It is at this point that I was pleased that I had not really thought much when I was buying the cornmeal and luckily I had bought the quick cook variant that advertised itself as ready after 3 minutes. Phew, that means a lot less stirring and less scrubbing because I am not the proud owner of nice pans. My pans are NOT to be trusted unattended and in charge of small children.

Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the cheese and pepper.

Anyway, here is the resulting goop.


So that wasn't bad, about 6 minutes whisking, yes I did it a bit longer than the pack recommends. I then left it to cool covered in cling film.


Now when it came to eat, yes it was just to bland to contemplate, and I couldn't put something that dull into my mouth. So I put a bit of uncommon sense into action and ground up some black pepper and garlic in my pestle and mortar with some fairly nice olive oil, put that on top of the Polenta in a fairly hot oven and cooked it until it was a little crispy round the edges.


Now I can kind of see what the fuss is about with Polenta. I will admit to more additions to this dish.

With the worry about it being just too bland, I made a quick tomato sauce, and had that and a bit of aubergine antipasti.

All in all, not a bad dinner and a recipe ticked off.

A tiny bit of a PS. I really didn't follow the recipe too well. Now that I have finished cooking and now that I have eaten, I distinclty remember not putting in the butter or cheese. Next time I will try hard to put lots of good stuff in the actual mix.