Polenta
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| Type | Porridge |
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| Place of origin | Northern Italy and Central Italy, |
| Main ingredients | Yellow or white cornmeal, liquid (water, ) |
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Polenta (Italian pronunciation: [poˈlɛnta]) is a dish of boiled cornmeal. It may be consumed hot as a porridge or allowed to cool and solidify into a loaf, which is then baked, fried, or grilled.
Latin polenta covered any hulled and crushed grain, especially barley-meal, and is derived from Latin pollen 'fine flour', which shares a root with pulvis 'dust'.
As it is known today, polenta derives from earlier forms of grain mush (known as puls or pulmentum in Latin or more commonly as gruel or porridge), commonly eaten since Roman times. Before the introduction of corn (maize) from America in the 16th century, polenta was made with such starchy ingredients as farro, chestnut flour, millet, spelt, and chickpeas.
Polenta has a creamy texture due to the gelatinization of starch in the grain. However, its consistency may not be completely homogeneous if a coarse grind or hard grain such as flint corn is used.
Historically, polenta was served as a peasant food in North America and Europe. The reliance on maize, which lacks readily accessible niacin unless cooked with alkali to release it, as a staple caused outbreaks of pellagra throughout the American South and much of Europe until the 20th century. In the 1940s and 1950s, polenta was often eaten with salted anchovy or herring, sometimes topped with sauces.
Polenta is typically simmered in a water-based liquid with other ingredients. Ingredients can also be added later once the polenta is done. It is often cooked in a large copper pot known in Italian as a paiolo. Boiled polenta may be eaten as it is, or it may be allowed to set, then baked, grilled or fried. Leftovers can be used the same way. In the Trieste area, it is eaten after the Venetian tradition with cuttlefish and tomato broth, with sausage following Austrian influence or with cooked plums following an ancient recipe. Some Lombard polenta dishes are polenta taragna (which includes buckwheat flour), polenta uncia, polenta concia, polenta e gorgonzola, and missultin e polenta; all are cooked with various cheeses and butter, except the last one, which is cooked with fish from Lake Como. It can also be prepared with porcini mushrooms, rapini, or other vegetables or meats, such as small songbirds in the case of the Venetian and Lombard dish polenta e osei. In some areas of Veneto, it can be also made of white cornmeal (mais biancoperla, then called polenta bianca). In some areas of Piedmont, it can also be made of potatoes instead of cornmeal (polenta bianca). In the westernmost alpine region the maize is sometimes added with local grains, barley and rye (polente bâtarde or polente barbare), and often frichâ, toasted on a loza (thin refractory stone).
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