Culture

"I'm making polenta."
"Placenta? What the FUCK man, I'm not eating an abortion!"

The sweet response of my ultimate food critics; my flatmates. In fact, polenta has nothing to do with human reproduction. It is cornmeal, and it is epic in its golden deliciousness. You can get cornmeal from supermarkets for epically cheap and chuck it in things instead of flour or pasta. It’s (fucking obviously) gluten free, so you little glutards can go rejoice and eat again. Bless your tiny stomachs.


Last week my friend told me she was reading To Kill A Mockingbird, and that she was 6/7 of the way through and nothing had happened. “Mmmmm yeah. Harper Lee. Babe. Black people. Corn bread. I should make motherfucking CORN BREAD!”
 
And so I did. It was a marginal failure; I “adapted” (did not follow) a recipe I “found online” (made up) and the result was a beautifully golden but dry-ish sort of cake thing, with bits of capsicum and salami I discovered in the back of the fridge and decided to put in for funness. Not my proudest housewife moment.
 
But, as a true scarfie (and nutritionist), I knew that there was an answer. After a snuffle around my cupboards (potatoes, canned things) and the recyling bin (half a bottle of Jacob’s Creek from before the holidays) I invented this amazing and ridiculously simple recipe. Warming, tasty, fricken’ magically epic, I dub it:
 

Polenta and borlotti bean deep dish with red wine sauce.
 

2 potatoes
2 kumara
2 cups polenta (cornmeal)
2 onions (diced)
Garlic (I use fresh cos I’m a snob. Use the jar stuff if you want, just never, ever tell me about it)
2 cans tomatoes
2 cans beans (I used borlotti, but kidney or pinto would be just fine)
1/2 bottle red wine
Beef stock cube (or a teaspoon of Vegemite dissolved in a smidge of water if you want to go totes vego)
Cheese
Ground coriander
Green herbs in a packet
Pepper
Salt (be wise; use iodised)

 
There’s three bits - the beans, the sauce, and the polenta - but they are all very simple and can be done simultaneously. All up, including washing dishes, this took me a little under an hour of kitchen time.

 
The beans:
In a little frying pan, put one diced onion and sauté it (fry on low heat) until it’s transparent. Add some garlic, a shake of ground coriander, a heap of pepper, and the beef stock cube/Vegemite and cook for a minute or so. Drain the beans and add them. Stir lots. When the beans are soft, turn off the heat.
 

The sauce:
Add the other onion to a bigger pan and let it cook til transparent. Add a bit of garlic, the canned tomatoes, salt, pepper, green herbs, and a shake of wine. Turn this bad boy right up and let it bubble away, adding the rest of the wine a splash at a time, for about half an hour.
 

The polenta:
Cube your potatoes and kumara and boil until soft. Cook your polenta by using a 1:3 ratio of polenta and liquid, which can be either stock or milk. You can either just boil it all up like rice or mix in a mixing bowl, pour it into a tray and bake for 25 minutes. Drain and mash potatoes and kumara and stir in the cooked polenta. Season.
 

All together:
Spread polenta mix in the bottom of a deep tray (I used a massive lasagne dish). Spread the bean mixture over the top and then pour over the sauce. Cover in cheese. Bake at about 150C until cheese is starting to brown deliciously (about 20 mins). Eat.
 

I served this with yum steamed veges and white sauce on the side, ‘cos it’s winter. You could go one better and make a wee salad. Or just eat it.

 
Serves 6 rather hungry students.