Basic Polenta, Version 1

Last week Junky Monkey and I were having a girls-only dinner. We made one of our favorite entree's--oven roasted pork ribs! She has her rib with BBQ Sauce and I am all over the Honey Teriyaki. As always, we needed a good, solid base for all of this yumminess.

One of my favorite side dishes (and yes, the Italian in me is coming out on this one) is polenta. I have my own favorite recipes for polenta, but decided to take down my good, old trusty How to Cook Everything and see if perhaps Mark Bittman had a recipe to try. Turns out, Mark Bittman must love polenta as much as me because he had THREE recipes. I decide to try Basic Polenta, Version 1 on pages 187-188. We used the variation which included Gorgonzola. Hey, I love polenta, I love Gorgonzola...they must be great together!!

For those who don't know, polenta is made by slowly wisking yellow cornmeal into a pot of boiling water. The temperature is then turned down and you stir the polenta until you get a nice thick much. From that point you can add extra ingredients for taste, you can pour the polenta on a platter and slice with various toppings, you can chill the polenta and cut up the chilled pieces to fry or broil to make polenta fries....the options are endless!!!

Here are some pictures of this polenta-making experience:

Our Yummy Ribs before they went into the oven.

Boiling the water.

Slowly adding the cornmeal while whisking.

Stirring the polenta as it thickens.

You want to keep stirring until you get a nice drag behind the spoon like the one above.

Adding the gorgonzola.

Finished dinner with rib, polenta and a light salad with balsamic-maple vinaigrette. BTW, in my quest for a good picture, I put WAY too much food on the plate. Neither Junky Monkey or I could finish it!!!

Unfortunately, this recipe was AWFUL! The cornmeal wasn't quite cooked enough. I would have used a bit more water. Additionally....IMHO, Gorgonzola and Polenta simply do.not.mix.! Perhaps in a different recipe with some additional layers I could enjoy them together. But this polenta was simply awful! Junky Monkey completely agreed. The first words out of her mouth when she took the first bite were: "Do I have to eat this?" I agreed that we didn't. When Awesome Sauce arrived later that evening, even he wasn't impressed. He did try to finish the polenta....though later he told me, it only got worse!

Ratings:
The Clumsy Gourmet: 2
Junky Monkey: 0
Awesome Sauce: 2.5