Polenta

• 1. Introduction

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  Polenta, the Italian dish of boiled cornmeal, has a name that means fine flour. That name comes from the Latin word pollen, which shares a root with pulvis, the word for dust. In its earliest sense, the word was not tied to corn at all. It covered any hulled and crushed grain, especially barley-meal. So how did a word for humble ground grain come to name one particular porridge? Why was that porridge so closely tied to the poor? And why do cooks still argue over whether anyone needs to stand at the stove and stir?

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• 2. Before Corn

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  Roman kitchens ate a grain mush they called puls or pulmentum, and that dish is the ancestor of the polenta known today. The mush was a common food from Roman times onward.

  Maize came across from America in the 16th century. Before it arrived, the pot was filled with other starchy ingredients. These included farro, chestnut flour, millet, spelt and chickpeas.

  Chestnut flour and chickpeas shared that older pot with spelt, long before any yellow maize crossed the ocean.

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• 3. Grain and Grind

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  Yellow maize is the usual grain in a pot of polenta, though buckwheat, white maize or mixtures of them also appear. The grind matters as much as the grain. Coarse meal makes a firm, coarse polenta, while finer meal makes a soft, creamy one. Once cooked, it can be left to cool and solidify into a loaf, which can then be baked, fried or grilled.

  Polenta is a staple of northern Italy and, to a lesser extent, central Italy. It also sits at the center of Swiss Italian, southern French, Croatian, Slovenian, Serbian and Romanian cooking.

  In Slovenia and Croatia, a dish called žganci is often mistaken for polenta.

  Cornmeal mush was an essential part of everyday nutrition for the lower classes in times past. For that reason, eating polenta was traditionally associated with them.

  Italian migrants carried the dish even further afield, into the kitchens of Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina.

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• 4. Across the Ocean

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  Italian immigrants brought polenta to the south of Brazil in the late 19th century. There it grew into something more than a meal. In Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná, it became an important part of Italian-Brazilian culture and identity.

  The fried version proved to have a wider reach than the migration itself. It became popular even in regions of Brazil that never received Italian migrants. Today it is a popular snack and finger food in bars across the country.

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• 5. The Long Stir

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  Forty-five minutes is the traditional simmering time for polenta, in four to five times its volume of watery liquid, with near-constant stirring. That effort is needed for the starch to gelatinize evenly.

  Cooks have invented shortcuts. Quick-cooking instant polenta is pre-cooked and ready in just a few minutes. It is widely used, but it is considered inferior to polenta made from unprocessed cornmeal, and it is best eaten after being baked or fried.

  In his 2006 book Heat, Bill Buford sets out the differences in taste between instant and slow-cooked polenta. He also describes a method that takes up to three hours but needs no constant stirring. In his words, "polenta, for most of its cooking, is left unattended." He adds, "If you don't have to stir it all the time, you can cook it for hours" and asks, "what does it matter, as long as you're nearby?"

  In January 1998, Cook's Illustrated magazine described a microwave method. It cut the cooking time to 12 minutes and called for only a single stir.

  The magazine's March 2010 issue offered a nearly unstirred stovetop method that mimics the traditional one. Its secret is a pinch of baking soda, which is an alkali.

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