Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [130]
4. Moisten the inside of the bowl with cold water. Turn the polenta out of the pot and into the bowl. After 10 to 15 minutes, turn the bowl over onto a wooden block or a large round platter, unmolding the polenta, which will have a dome-like shape.
5. If serving it soft and hot, serve it at once. You may, if you wish, scoop out the upper central portion of the dome and fill it with whatever you have prepared to go with the polenta—sausages, pork ribs, a veal, beef, or lamb stew, fricasseed chicken, and so on.
Note on consistency As it begins to cool, polenta should be thick, and when moved, firm enough to quiver. From an Italian point of view, it is least appealing when it is as thin and runny as breakfast oatmeal.
Note If you are going to let it become completely cold and firm and later slice it, do not put the hot polenta in a bowl, but spread it flat on a board to a thickness of about 3 inches.
Ahead-of-time note If you are planning to slice polenta and grill it, bake it, or fry it, you must make it several hours in advance. It will keep for several days in the refrigerator. If you are refrigerating it for a few days, keep it whole, in one piece, and wrap it tightly with foil or plastic wrap.
Cleaning the pot After emptying the polenta from the pot, fill it with cold water and set it aside to soak overnight. In the morning most of the cornmeal film attached to the pot lifts off easily. If you are using an Italian-made unlined copper polenta pot, after emptying it in the morning and scraping away all the loosened residues, clean it with ¼ cup of vinegar and some salt. Rinse with plain water, without using any detergent, and wipe dry. Whenever you use an unlined copper pot, go over it again with vinegar and salt, and rinse thoroughly with plain water before each use.
Variation: Polenta by the No-Stirring Method
Stirring polenta in an open pot for the entire time it cooks undoubtedly yields the best product, mostly in terms of pure fragrance, and to a certain, but lesser extent in terms of overall flavor. It is nonetheless possible to make very good polenta with hardly any stirring. It will take the same amount of time, but it will free you from the stove for the better part of an hour. Use exactly the same ingredients in the basic recipe above, and proceed as follows:
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, stir with a long-handled wooden spoon for 2 minutes, then cover the pot. Adjust heat so that the water bubbles at a lively simmer, but not at a full boil. When the polenta has cooked for 10 minutes, uncover and stir for 1 full minute, then cover again. After another 10 minutes, stir again, then cover, let cook another 10 minutes, stir once more, and in 10 minutes, repeat the procedure.
4. Forty minutes will have elapsed, and the polenta will need another 5 minutes to shed its graininess and come together into a soft, creamy mass. Just before you take it off heat, stir it vigorously for about 1 minute, loosening it from the pot. Turn it out of the pot into a moistened bowl, and proceed as described in the basic recipe.
Instant Polenta
IT IS SO EASY and it takes such little time to make polenta using the instant product, that I wish I could regard it more favorably. Unfortunately, if you are acquainted with the texture and flavor of polenta cooked by the conventional slow method, you might not be wholly satisfied by the results the shortcut brings.
Not to be completely discouraging, I would recommend you rely on the instant polenta when you plan to integrate polenta with other