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[EarthNSky <erthnsky AT gmail.com>]

 Thanks Susan Jane, Marie and Lynda for some good information.
I won't be giving the 'grits' to the chickens.

I'll cook it longer to make mush, refrigerate it, slice it, and fry it 
with some hot spiced Italian sausage.

It might be a week or so before I get to do this, but I will post back 
on results.

If anyone has any other yummy way to cook this not already mentioned, 
write on!




On 10/17/2010 6:55 PM, Lynda wrote:
> 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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--
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!")