Recipe 122: Creamy Polenta

The challenge: car shopping before cooking. My poor James totaled his focus last Friday morning, and now we are on the car search. The body shop he'd towed the car to had given him a loaner, but apparently the rental coverage wasn't included. I'm not sure it's worth it in the end. But that's another debate, this blog will be about Polenta. This recipe looked easy enough, but could be tricky. I needed to bring milk with chicken stock and butter to a boil. Boiling milk is always tricky. I'm not sure what happened after I read the directions. I added the milk and stock and butter to the pan. Then the salt and pepper, then dumped in the grits before I turned the pan on. Too late to fish them out now, looks like I'm trying this method. I also thought I had gotten more of a coarse grind of meal, but if this got much finer, it'd be corn flour, not corn meal to make polenta with. After bringing the mixture to a boil, it began to thicken very quickly and did not take the stated 30 minutes of cooking, or the dreaded hour to hour and a half of cooking expected. I think I got a form of instant grits. The directions on the can said mix with water(Boring! and yuck!), and cook for five to ten minutes. That's considered instant in many worlds, not just mine. However, they were close to done, and tasty as grits get without bacon, so I began to grate the parmesan cheese to add to them, and when that was ready, I mixed it in with the mascarpone cheese which may be part of my snack tomorrow with apples. Next, I finished chopping the parsley for the mushroom ragout to be paired with this, and I served some up for my late dinner. I admit, we stopped at Burger King for a quick and dirty meal on our way north for long distance car shopping. May the car venture end soon but well, and only when James has found a good car that satisfies him. The polenta and mushroom ragout made for a much better and more nutritious meal. Happy eating, I may make this recipe again, but I shall begin experimenting with different corn textures and grits to check the differences.

Recipe 121: Wild Mushroom Ragout (over Creamy Polenta)

Yes, I am still working on the more costly recipes in this book, and it seems I haven't blogged this one yet. It was fairly easy and a good excuse for me to avoid laundry. Before I begin, I will preface this recipe by saying I re-learned a very helpful lesson last night helping James re-make his Caribean Jerk style marinade-mis en plas, mis en plas, mis en plas...for the non-french, nor cooking show induced, this is loosely translated as "location, location, location." Know where your ingredients are, and what you need. I made a marinade that should have taken twenty to thirty minutes to whip together that took me an hour and a half and two trips to my home two and a half blocks away, on foot. Tonight, I started with the ingredients I would need right away on the cutting board, the onion and the garlic. The oil lay next to it. The mushrooms were on deck to be washed in the sink. I chopped a medium onion and followed it up with a fair amount of garlic. I then poured the 2 tablespoons of oil in the pan, and began to sweat the onions. I also moved the garlic, washed the mushrooms a handful at a time, and quartered them to go into a waiting bowl. I stirred the onions after each chopping session with the mushrooms. I repeated the process until the mushroom bowl filled. I added the garlic and stuffed a few more in until the garlic had its full thirty seconds. Then I poured in the mushrooms that were done and stirred. I chopped the rest quickly and added them in. I then began chopping fresh oregano and thyme to be added next, stirring mushrooms every minute or two as they sweat out their own water content. This recipe called for two pounds of wild mushrooms, so when James and I found Enoki and Oyster mushrooms and some baby portabellas, I talked him into buying them. Thankfully, I didn't have to do much talking. He's so good to me. Next, I presented James with cans to open and gasp, used 1 cup of canned diced tomatoes. Emeril said so. I'm not sure why, I still prefer fresh. But he said use canned. I'm sure he has his reasons. I stirred the mushroom and onion mixture again and pulled out the goat stock. (I thought had thawed chicken stock, but James informs me it was goat stock). I added the tomatoes and paste as well as the oregano and thyme. I also added the 2 cups of goat stock. James butchered a goat a couple of weeks ago, and made goat stock with some of the parts, so we have goat meat. I don't think Emeril has any goat recipes in this book though. I was almost disappointed. But I still need to get and make quail. Ah, back to the recipe. I'm almost done, for tonight. I bring the mixture to a boil then reduce it to a simmer for about twenty minutes. At this time, I realize I can't find the grater in James' kitchen and he doesn't remember where it was put. I decide it will be easier to go pull mine out of my cupboard and bring it back than to search James' kitchen(I'd checked all the obvious spots first). I leave James with instructions to turn the pan off when the microwave timer sounds. I come back to a sleeping James and the microwave says end. I know I wasn't gone that long, but I'm glad the sauce needed more than the recommended twenty minutes. I begin to shred the Parmesan cheese I bought for this recipe and realize it could wait until tomorrow as I'm serving it then, over the Creamy Polenta. I still need to add salt and pepper and parsley to this particular recipe(though I'm not sure it needs it at this moment-maybe the pepper and parsley), but I'll do that before I serve it tomorrow. It's really good so far, I will be making variations of this recipe for some time to come. I think I may have, just with more tomatoes and wine;-), and I normally call it tomato sauce or pizza sauce or pasta sauce, though I do add Basil and/or Italian seasonings to them. I will update this once I make the polenta(which I may have made before), and let you know how it all tastes together. I think it will be a phenomenal dinner.