{"id":1927,"date":"2017-07-24T09:00:50","date_gmt":"2017-07-24T15:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/villasentieri.com\/?post_type=recipe&p=1927"},"modified":"2026-09-02T10:59:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T17:59:18","slug":"polenta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/villasentieri.com\/index.php\/2017\/07\/24\/polenta\/","title":{"rendered":"Polenta"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 24, 2017<\/span><\/p>\n

Polenta isn’t traditionally a Southern Italian food.\u00a0 It is a staple of Italy’s northern provinces, however.<\/p>\n

I didn’t eat polenta until I was in college; the time of my greatest food exploration and experimentation.<\/p>\n

Granted, Northern Italian food isn’t as far afield from the Southern Italian food I grew up with as are the Sri Lankan, Chinese, Bangladeshi, Filipino, and West Indian food that were a large part of my food exploration in college.<\/p>\n

Even when I stayed within the bounds of European food, I could move close to the edge.<\/p>\n

For example, my roommate worked in an anesthesia research lab.\u00a0 Rabbit blood was used for experiments, so rabbit ended up on our menu regularly (as it did on the menus of other lab workers).\u00a0 Those rabbits became the impetus for learning to make Hasenpfeffer the traditional way.<\/p>\n

Read any Hasenpfeffer recipe now, and you will be instructed to marinate the rabbit in an acidic marinade in the refrigerator.\u00a0 But refrigeration is a recent invention in the history of Hasenpfeffer.<\/p>\n

My culinary endeavors at that point operated out of a six-foot-wide Pullman kitchen with an under-counter refrigerator in a dormitory apartment.\u00a0 My roommate and I turned out major meals every day of the week.\u00a0 We had two shopping days, one to the open-air Ninth Street market in Philadelphia (aka the “Italian Market”\u009d) and one to the Pathmark Supermarket in Broomall, PA.\u00a0 The supermarkets around the University did not have the best selection or quality at that time.<\/p>\n

Our little refrigerator was always packed like a jigsaw puzzle.\u00a0 (Just ask my husband about my ability to pack a suitcase and it will give you some idea of how I packed that little fridge!)<\/p>\n

That meant, however, that there was never any room to refrigerate a marinating rabbit.\u00a0 I turned to the age-old method and marinated it at room temperature for two days before cooking it.\u00a0 By the end of that year of college I turned out a pretty decent Hasenpfeffer.<\/p>\n

Then there was the Guyanese version of an originally Portuguese dish, called Garlic Pork in Guyana.\u00a0 Versions of the dish can still be found in Portugal and in former Portuguese-controlled areas like Goa in India.\u00a0 In Guyanese Garlic Pork, cubes of pork are marinated in vinegar seasoned with lots of Scotch Bonnet peppers and thyme.\u00a0 As you can imagine, given our refrigerator situation, the marinating took place at room temperature.<\/p>\n

All this marinating happened in what were then (in the 1970’s) vintage British apothecary jars that I brought back from Guyana.\u00a0 Every household in Guyana had one or more of these jars and they were the standard vessel for marinating Garlic Pork.\u00a0 They also work well for Hasenpfeffer!<\/p>\n

I still have these jars and really prize them.<\/p>\n

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Vintage British Apothecary Jars<\/strong><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Meat marinating in a jar can be pretty unobtrusive.\u00a0 Not so a duck, head and feet intact, strung up from an eye hook in the ceiling!<\/p>\n

My roommate’s mother, of Chinese heritage, sent us a sheaf of her recipes that she neatly typed out on onion skin paper.\u00a0 (I still have them.)\u00a0 One of the recipes was for a home-style version of Peking Duck.\u00a0 The duck had to hang at room temperature for a day, being periodically lacquered with a mixture of soy sauce and other ingredients before roasting.\u00a0 The duck, hung right inside the door, greeted visitors to our dormitory apartment for the better part of a day.<\/p>\n

By comparison, learning to make Northern Italian food was pretty tame.\u00a0 Enter Marcella Hazan (via her first cookbook) to teach me the basics.\u00a0 She was demanding when it came to making polenta, insisting that it be stirred non-stop for 45 minutes.<\/p>\n

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Honestly, I did it that way until sometime in 1996 when my mother-in-law convinced me that constant stirring was not needed.\u00a0 It’s much easier to make polenta if one just stirs periodically.\u00a0 And the best thing is, it WORKS!<\/p>\n

On a trip to Italy with my in-laws I bought a traditional unlined copper polenta pot.\u00a0 I don’t know if it makes better polenta than an ordinary pot but I love using it.<\/p>\n

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My Unlined Copper Polenta Pot<\/strong><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The traditional implement for stirring polenta is a round wooden paddle.\u00a0 On the left, below, is the one my mother-in-law’s father made for her.\u00a0 On the right is a paddle I picked up at the Otovalo market in Ecuador more than 20 years ago.\u00a0 I prefer it to the stick as it provides more “action”\u009d in the pot.\u00a0 (Truth be told, my mother-in-law prefers it too!)<\/p>\n

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Implements for Stirring Polenta<\/span><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While yellow and white cornmeal are traditional, in New Mexico I can get blue cornmeal which I like to use for its dramatic color.<\/p>\n

Cornmeal should be gently showered into the boiling water while stirring.\u00a0 Fine cornmeal tends to develop lumps more easily than coarse cornmeal.\u00a0 In this video, I am using coarse cornmeal and can therefore add it more quickly.<\/p>\n