Today I bring you a typical Italian dish almost as old as the history of my country, it is a poor dish and easy to prepare, today I bring you POLENTA.
POLENTA is made from 100% corn flour and its colour is an almost blinding bright yellow, it is a basic dish and you can combine anything you like from vegetables to meat and even fish.
The preparation is long if you start from corn flour but there is also instant polenta ready in just ten minutes and it is exactly what we will use today.
We will make two types of sauce, the first with very tasty pancetta so pay attention to the salt, the second with a more subdued but equally delicious meat sauce!
You are ready? let's start with the execution of the dish!
POLENTA WITH ROMAN PECORINO CHEESE AND BACON
Ingredients:
- Corn flour 180 grams for two people
- Pecorino Romano cheese
- Bacon
- Milk
- Pepper
Let's start with grating the Pecorino.
Then add the grated cheese in a saucepan with 3 tablespoons of milk, add pepper to taste and mix until creamy.
(We avoided salt because both Pecorino and pancetta are very salty and you risked drinking litres of water for days :))
Now let's dedicate ourselves to polenta: put 75 cl of water in a pot and when it has boiled, pour in the Polenta, stirring to prevent lumps from forming.
Once all the flour has been poured, let it cook for eight minutes, stirring occasionally (we used instant flour, otherwise with normal corn flour you will have to cook for about 2 hours).
In a non-stick pan, we put the bacon to cook to make it crisp.
After eight minutes, our polenta is ready. At this point, add the polenta to the pecorino cream, stirring to make everything uniform, over low heat for a few more minutes.
We are ready to serve, and this is what our dish looks like !!
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Let's move on to the second seasoning alternative. We have made two preparations to show you how polenta can be versatile and can be enjoyed with an infinite number of combinations to suit your tastes.
POLENTA WITH MEAT SAUCE
Ingredients:
- Polenta 180 grams for two people
- Onion
- Sausage
- Tomato pulp
- Salt
##### PREPARATION
In a saucepan, brown the finely chopped onion and once it has browned, add the sausage.
Brown the sausage for a few minutes, add the tomato, a pinch of sugar to dampen the acidity of the tomato and finally the salt. Cover with a lid and let the sauce boil over low heat for a couple of hours. The secret of a good ragù is to let it boil over low heat for a long time, adding a little water or milk if necessary.
Our Ragù is ready to be served with polenta!
Here are two variants of polenta as written above Polenta is truly versatile and can be used in various ways, with wild boar sauce, with vegetables, it can be fried or baked in the oven practically it can be used with any ingredient or almost.
The appearance of my dishes is perhaps not so beautiful to look at I assure you that they are delicious to eat ... I confess that the first course, despite not adding salt, came out very tasty but good!
See you for the next recipe !!
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The photos are taken by the author.
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Wow! I love Italian cuisine and I guess to taste this traditional dish means visiting Italy. Magnifico!