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["Lynda" <lurine AT com-pair.net>]

Well, having been married to two Italians, although not at the same time,
mind you <g> AND having grown up in the Bay Area where my dad knew the owner
of about every restaurant there was, I have had the benefit of learning at
the knee of some exceptional Italian cooks.  From Mama Frediani, Lena Fiori,
the chef's at Peter Allioto's and, of course, Noni and DH's dad who passed
down his mother's recipes from Naples.

*Real* polenta, not that dastardly c**p sold in grocery stores in tubes, is
a combination of coarse ground yellow corn and fine ground yellow corn.  It
is served two ways:  the mush which you seem to not like (recipe to follow) 
and
loaf.  In Italy, the lady of the house always makes extra polenta.  She will
serve it like the mush BUT not as a breakfast food, as something you put
"stuff" on top of.  Then she takes the extra, puts it in a loaf pan and
sticks it in the fridge overnight.  Next day or sometime in the not to
distant future, you pop it out of the loaf pan, slice it and fry it.  And 
sometimes she'll just make it to be "pie" and set it out on a marble slab to 
cool and then slice it and fry it or use it in a layered casserole type 
dish.

Now, that's when I like it for breakfast and I melt some butter on it and
sprinkle brown sugar or sugar/cinnamon OR you can just pour maple syrup over 
it.

For a dinner, the fried polenta is great with your basic meat sauce over it
or a marinara with melted Parmesan or other Italian cheese of choice, OR if
you are a weird American Indian such as myself <g>, you fry it up and put
Indian taco fixing over the top.  Excellent that way!

So, here's your basic recipe:

9 cups water
salt
3 cups cornmeal.

Bring water to a boil, add salt, reduce heat to medium low.  When water
comes down to a simmer, slowly!! pour the cornmeal in a thin stream, and
stir constantly with a long wooden spoon so you don't get lumps.  Keep
stirring and when polenta returns to a VERY low simmer, cook 25-30 (Noni
insisted on 90 and stuck it on the back of the stove and just let it go at a
REALLY low simmer) minutes.

The differences in regions are in how long you cook it, what type of
cornmeal you use, how much salt and whether or not you add butter.

You go south, and they'll add up to 2 tablespoons of salt.

You head north and it is less salt and it is 2 to 1 coarse ground cornmeal
to fine ground cornmeal.

You get really far north and towards the end of the cooking process they'll
toss in a tablespoon or two of butter.

Almost anything you've heard of being done with or to noodles is done to
polenta.  Layered with sauces, cheese stirred in, pesto stirred in,
shrimp/beef/pork/chicken with "gravy" poured over.

And in some regions, Lombardy, for example, they'll use part buckwheat flour
and part cornmeal to make the polenta.

Now, I will say that I have never seen anyone add pepper <g> but wouldn't be
surprised if they did the closer you get to Sicily since from about Naples
down they sprinkle red pepper flakes on just about everything, so black
pepper wouldn't be out of the question!

Oh, almost forgot.  To do it right, you should have a copper pan.  Seems you
don't have to hock your first born over there to buy a good copper sauce
pan.

Lynda
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "EarthNSky" <erthnsky AT gmail.com>


>  Okay, we are part of the 'grit-eating' world, and have never eaten or
> tasted polenta, per se.  It was always my understanding that grits are
> made from hominy which is made from soaking corn kernels in lye.  The
> hominy is then dried and ground, voila, grits.  Polenta, I thought, was
> more akin to corn meal, just a course ground meal.  In Dixie, cornmeal is
> used in frying, and in making cornbread, which I have always thought would
> be closer to what polenta would be like than grits.
> Now mind you, I grew up eating Quaker instant grits-blasphemy, I know, to
> some, but common enough for you to know what that is.  Now, we mostly use
> the long cook version, still Quaker, but we like the course ground, long
> cook grits.  I eat grits with butter and sometimes cheese or sausage or
> bacon.  I don't put eggs in them the way dh does, nor ham, nor onions, nor
> sugar nor milk, nor anything else that I have ever heard of using to
> flavor grits.    I think I am rather simplistic in my grits preferences,
> but I should also include that  I have eaten leftover fried grits and a
> cheese grit casserole with fried fish.
>
> So here we are in Kroger yesterday (I rarely shop at Kroger anymore, but
> wanted some organic cherry juice that only they carry) and dh puts a bag
> of Quaker "yellow corn grits" in the buggy.  We later had a discussion
> about the difference and I told him what I knew about so called hominy
> grits, and that the lye removed the color, I thought.  He went to the web
> for answers.  He looked at Wikipedia? and found a page that suggested that
> the only difference between yellow grits and white grits was the color of
> the corn kernel.  He found something else that likened the process to the
> difference between brown rice and white rice, equating yellow grits with
> brown rice-degerminated.    So is this degerming process the whole lye to
> hominy stage?  Have we just dropped the word hominy from hominy grits and
> just call them grits, or are grits and hominy grits separate things still?
> Are Quaker instant grits really instant hominy grits?  Are Quaker long
> cook grits really hominy grits since they are white and degermed, even
> though it doesn't say hominy?
>
> Fast forward to this morning,  we prepared the yellow grits as usual.
> Neither of us liked them.  It is not grits.  This did not even approximate
> grits, even with butter and salt/pepper.  If this is polenta, I surely
> don't like it.  Half a spoonful was enough for me.  But, perhaps if this
> is polenta, I have cooked it improperly and seasoned it improperly.  Dry,
> except for the color, it looks just like long cook grits in courseness.
> Do I need to feed this to the chickens or is there a yummy dish I could
> make and call it polenta?  Could it be used like a cornmeal in cornbread
> with tons of corn and jalepenos?
>
> What the heck??
>
> Bev
>
> --
> EarthNSky Farm    34.498N    85.076W
> SISU! (Finnish--There is no single word in English that encompasses
> all that sisu means, but it combines the following ideas: guts, pep,
> determination, stubbornness, perseverance, hardiness, stamina, go, do,
> nerve, spunk, pluck, and grit.  It's like "Just Do It!" & "Go for It!")
>
>
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