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Feb. 3rd, 2005 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickDinner this evening was a pretty decent effort on my part, so here are directions so that all ya'll can play along if you want. Note that in all food-related posts, I actually like the stuff I am eating. If I didn't like it, there is no way I would eat it. The food I am buying at the grocery is the food I would buy at the grocery even if I weren't playing "Can I eat for a year on the alleged per-capita cost of food for a Merkin?" and the meals I am making are the meals I would be making whether or not anyone else was watching.
For dinner I had polenta (I am apparently in love with this for the moment. I don't know what the deal is, but I find it extremely appealing as a food item.) with an onion-tomato relish on the side. Generally, I like polenta with kidney beans on the side. It's a colorful combination and the rich flavor of the kidneys goes really well with the corn flavor of the polenta. However, I did kidney beans last week and I wanted something different this time.
I'd have done greens with my polenta, but I ate the last of the collards this morning for breakfast with a side of soba noodles and a garlic/soy/sesame sauce I cooked up. They were delicious. Collards go surprisingly well with soy and garlic (but I don't like them with ginger, so I didn't put any of that in the sauce). Collards are a lot more versatile than people think.
So, no kidney beans and no greens. Corn and tomatoes also go together very well.
Tonight, I made a worthy onion-tomato relish. A raw onion and (canned, this time of year) tomato relish would not have been very interesting. It'd have been sharp, sort of one-dimensional. The onions are sharp and the tomatoes are acidic and that's all there would be in the thing. It would have been overpowering. (This is not my exceptional chefly intuition, here. This is because I tried that a couple of weeks back and it was disappointing.) To mellow it out a bit this time around, I carmelized a quarter cup of onions in a tiny bit of olive oil. Then I minced about half that much raw onion and combined the two onion parts with two corsely-chopped whole tomatoes (from a can). Salt, black pepper, and voila! Not-very-instant relish, but interesting, tasty, layered relish.
That, with a nice-sized slab of polenta, was one hell of a nice dinner for being about fifty cents a serving.
Given that endorsement, I'm sure you all want to make Polenta for people who don't want to fuck around needlessly:
In a heavy saucepan, put 1 cup water on med-high heat.
In 1-cup measure, put 1/3 cup cornmeal and 1/3 cup cold water. Stir with fork until not very lumpy.
Pour cornmeal mixture into saucepan, stirring the stuff in the saucepan pretty attentively.
Heat, while stirring, until it gets thick.
It is thick when the spoon cuts a wake and the rolls of the spoon-wake don't melt back in right away.
Quickly pour the polenta on a large dinner plate.
Smooth the puddle with the back of a spoon to make it evenly thick. Let cool -- it'll firm up a bit as that happens.
Using a knife, cut into wedges. Makes about three servings if you're not eating much else with it.
You can reheat this easily by frying it (carefully) in a pan with a small amount of butter. Also, it'll taste a hell of a lot better with salt. I don't salt during the cooking process, but I do salt at the table.
If you want a more involved, more correct recipe for polenta, there's always the internet. I find that this works fine for my polenta needs. I expect if you had some chicken stock floating around, that'd make a nice change from the water base. You can probably include stuff like diced red peppers or chopped up sun-dried tomatoes or whatefver if you feel all gung-ho about the process. I like the plain corn kind, myself. It goes with more stuff when it's plain.
For dinner I had polenta (I am apparently in love with this for the moment. I don't know what the deal is, but I find it extremely appealing as a food item.) with an onion-tomato relish on the side. Generally, I like polenta with kidney beans on the side. It's a colorful combination and the rich flavor of the kidneys goes really well with the corn flavor of the polenta. However, I did kidney beans last week and I wanted something different this time.
I'd have done greens with my polenta, but I ate the last of the collards this morning for breakfast with a side of soba noodles and a garlic/soy/sesame sauce I cooked up. They were delicious. Collards go surprisingly well with soy and garlic (but I don't like them with ginger, so I didn't put any of that in the sauce). Collards are a lot more versatile than people think.
So, no kidney beans and no greens. Corn and tomatoes also go together very well.
Tonight, I made a worthy onion-tomato relish. A raw onion and (canned, this time of year) tomato relish would not have been very interesting. It'd have been sharp, sort of one-dimensional. The onions are sharp and the tomatoes are acidic and that's all there would be in the thing. It would have been overpowering. (This is not my exceptional chefly intuition, here. This is because I tried that a couple of weeks back and it was disappointing.) To mellow it out a bit this time around, I carmelized a quarter cup of onions in a tiny bit of olive oil. Then I minced about half that much raw onion and combined the two onion parts with two corsely-chopped whole tomatoes (from a can). Salt, black pepper, and voila! Not-very-instant relish, but interesting, tasty, layered relish.
That, with a nice-sized slab of polenta, was one hell of a nice dinner for being about fifty cents a serving.
Given that endorsement, I'm sure you all want to make Polenta for people who don't want to fuck around needlessly:
In a heavy saucepan, put 1 cup water on med-high heat.
In 1-cup measure, put 1/3 cup cornmeal and 1/3 cup cold water. Stir with fork until not very lumpy.
Pour cornmeal mixture into saucepan, stirring the stuff in the saucepan pretty attentively.
Heat, while stirring, until it gets thick.
It is thick when the spoon cuts a wake and the rolls of the spoon-wake don't melt back in right away.
Quickly pour the polenta on a large dinner plate.
Smooth the puddle with the back of a spoon to make it evenly thick. Let cool -- it'll firm up a bit as that happens.
Using a knife, cut into wedges. Makes about three servings if you're not eating much else with it.
You can reheat this easily by frying it (carefully) in a pan with a small amount of butter. Also, it'll taste a hell of a lot better with salt. I don't salt during the cooking process, but I do salt at the table.
If you want a more involved, more correct recipe for polenta, there's always the internet. I find that this works fine for my polenta needs. I expect if you had some chicken stock floating around, that'd make a nice change from the water base. You can probably include stuff like diced red peppers or chopped up sun-dried tomatoes or whatefver if you feel all gung-ho about the process. I like the plain corn kind, myself. It goes with more stuff when it's plain.
