Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [129]
5. Bake on the uppermost rack of the preheated oven for 15 minutes. Transfer to a serving platter, without turning the crespelle “pie” over, but loosening it with a spatula and sliding it out of the pan. Allow to settle a few minutes before serving, or serve at room temperature.
POLENTA
PASTA HAS BECOME SO universally accepted as the national dish of Italy that it is difficult to believe that not much farther into the past than two generations ago, pasta was as foreign to certain Italian regions as it might have been to, say, Lapland. For a quarter of a millennium, in the Veneto and Friuli, as well as in much of Lombardy, it was polenta, more than any other food, that sustained life. Preparing it was a ritual, eating it was like receiving a sacrament.
It was made then, as it is today, in an unlined copper kettle, the paiolo, once kept hanging on a hook in the center of the fireplace. The hearth could often accommodate a bench on which the family sat as they watched the stream of cornmeal go glittering into the boiling kettle, and waited for the tireless stirring of the cook to transform it into a meal. When, three quarters of an hour later, the cornmeal became polenta, the golden mass was poured steaming onto a circular board. To a nineteenth-century Milanese novelist describing the scene, it looked like a harvest moon coming through the mist.
Polenta can be used in many ways, in a first or second course, as a side dish, or as an appetizer.
When Piping Hot and Soft
• With butter and grated Parmesan cheese melted into it, it can be eaten alone. A creamy gorgonzola, softened at room temperature for 4 to 6 hours, is marvelous when mashed into hot, very soft polenta together with some butter and Parmesan.
• It can provide a bed for warm steamed shrimp or other seafood that has been tossed with a little raw garlic, chopped very, very fine, and extra virgin olive oil.
• It goes with any stewed, braised, or roasted meat or fowl. It is the ultimate accompaniment for squab, pigeons, or quail. Whenever polenta is served soft and warm, it is desirable to have enough juices available from the meat it accompanies to sauce it lightly.
When Allowed to Cool
• It can be sliced and grilled and served, as in Venice, alongside a fritto misto di pesce, a mixed fry of seafood and vegetables.
• It can be sliced and baked like lasagne, with a variety of fillings.
• It can be cut into thin sticks or wedges, fried crisp in vegetable oil, and served with salads, or alongside Sautéed Calf’s Liver and Onions, Venetian Style, or with aperitifs, before dinner.
There is both yellow and white polenta, depending on whether one uses meal from yellow or white corn, but yellow polenta is more common. The cornmeal itself may be either fine-grained or coarse. Coarse-grained yellow cornmeal is more robustly satisfying in texture and flavor, and it is the one suggested in the recipes below.
Making Polenta
About 4 cups
7 cups water
1 tablespoon salt
1⅔ cups coarse-grained imported Italian yellow cornmeal
An 8- to 10-cup bowl, preferably steel or copper
1. Bring the water to a boil in a large, heavy pot.
2. Add the salt, keep the water boiling at medium-high heat, and add the cornmeal in a very thin stream, letting a fistful of it run through nearly closed fingers. You should be able to see the individual grains spilling into the pot. The entire time you are adding the cornmeal, stir it with a whisk, and make sure the water is always boiling.
3. When you have put in all the meal, begin to stir with a long-handled wooden spoon, stirring continuously and with thoroughness, bringing the mixture up from the bottom, and loosening it from the sides of the