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  • From: EarthNSky <erthnsky AT gmail.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Grits-Polenta, OMG I am confused!<g>
  • Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 13:26:37 -0400

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!")






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