I served this with the almond chicken at the dinner party. And I was all set to be little miss cleverpants and refer to it as “faux-lenta” because I used yellow cornmeal to make it, not something specifically designed and labeled as “polenta.” But according to my research, by which I mean reading the “Polenta” page on wikipedia, polenta is cornmeal. The site from which I got the recipe disagrees a bit, saying that polenta is a more specific subset of cornmeal; it comes in a variety of different grinds, for instance, and it is rather more difficult to find than ordinary cornmeal, but ordinary cornmeal can be used “in a pinch.” I wasn’t in a pinch per se*, but when faced with conflicting theories, I picked the one that allowed me to be right more easily, and went with the jar of cornmeal I already had sitting on top of the toaster oven instead of having to go out on a shopping expedition.
Polenta is, at heart, peasant food. Boiling up a bunch of cornmeal to make a mushy substance is far from hoity-toity, after all. I feel that peasants would be on my side with this one, and wholeheartedly support my use of plain old regular cornmeal – not that different from what they had in actual fact, and not different at all in terms of making do. Although I suppose “The Picky Peasant” would be a good name for a food blog.
Bacon-Sage Polenta
Ingredients
4 slices bacon
1 tbsp fresh sage, chopped
1 8-oz can corn kernels (or I guess they’re 8.5-oz cans. Whatever. An extra half an ounce won’t end your life.)
4 cups water
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup parmesan (I may have eyeballed it and/or just thrown in handfuls indiscriminately)
salt and pepper
Method
Cook the bacon until crispy in the pan you intend to use for the whole thing. That’s right, that means things are going to get fried up in bacon grease, are you excited???
Take the bacon out and leave it to drain on paper towels.
Drain off all but a tablespoon of the bacon grease in the pan. I always find this step hard in recipes – I wind up spooning the excess grease out into my grease jar and it takes a hundred years, because I can’t just pour it for fear of pouring off too much. If you’re better than me at this, more power to you.
Saute the sage and corn in the remaining grease for 1 minute.
Pour in water and turn the heat up to medium-high.
You’re supposed to bring it to a boil first and THEN add the cornmeal, but I just added it straight away because I wasn’t paying attention. I don’t think it suffered; the texture was still pretty good and it cooked in the right amount of time. So whisk the cornmeal in, either right away or once the water boils.
Turn the heat down and let it cook, whisking fairly often, for 10 minutes. If it is getting too solid, add more water, but mine didn’t need it.
In between whiskings, break up your bacon into bite-sized pieces.
When the 10 minutes is up, stir in the parmesan and bacon.
Crank some salt and pepper over it and serve piping hot.
This made enough to feed a small army. Serves 4 to 5 indeed, sir – maybe as a main course, or if the 5 people in question are linebackers. Also, be careful when you’re stirring it. It bubbles thickly, like lava, and when those bubbles pop and hit you in the side of the finger, you could be forgiven for thinking it IS lava.
* who wants to bet that by including this phrase in a food blog, I get a bunch of search engine hits looking for the fancy restaurant?
