Polenta: what it is, how to cook a traditional dish of Italian cuisine

They say about the famous Italian dish called “polenta” that it can be transformed like Cinderella in the tale of Charles Perrault: in the afternoon it is a simple rustic dish, in the evening – an exquisite culinary masterpiece. The main thing in it is cornmeal.
The key to success is compliance with the technology of working with this product, which is not the most usual for Russians, and, of course, a creative approach. So what is polenta, what kind of cereal is used in its preparation, and how to cook an Italian corn meal dish at home?

The idea belongs to the ancient Romans – it was they who began to cook porridge “pulse”, which later became the prototype of polenta. The difference between the two dishes is that the pulse was cooked from millet, chickpea, barley, and polenta – from corn, which became available to Europeans only at the end of the 16th century, when its grains were brought to the Old World from America. Continue reading →