Wednesday, October 01, 2008

"It's like polenta, only tasty!"

I clearly have a thing for food that you can eat with a spoon: mashed potatoes, soups, soupy stews, rice pudding -- and now sweetcorn polenta. This was another Grauniad weekend magazine recipe, this time courtesy of Yotam Ottolenghi. It is pretty simple, although you do need a food processor.

Take 6 ears of sweetcorn and shave off the kernels. Doing this into a large bowl stops the little blighters from flying everywhere. You need about 560 grams. Then, place them in a saucepan with 500 ml of water and 20 grams of butter. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 12 minutes. Put the kernels and a little bit of the water into a food processor (leave the rest of the water in the pan) and process the hell out of the kernels -- it takes about 3-4 minutes to get them really smooth. You may have to scrape down the sides of the bowl and add a little more water.

Return the paste to the pan with the water and cook on a low heat for about 10-15 minutes, stirring all the time, until it thickens. Then stir in 20 grams of butter, 200 grams of crumbled feta cheese, 1/2 tsp of salt and some black pepper. Keep stirring for another 2 minutes and then serve, preferably with some sort of tomato/veg sauce on top.

Now, I don't mind ordinary polenta but PJ's not so keen -- hence the quote that's the title of this post. But this stuff knocks ordinary polenta into a cocked hat! It's bright yellow summer on a plate -- just right for a cold, dark September evening. Again, no pics; it got eaten far too quickly for that.

1 comment:

CSS said...

Hey. I LIKE polenta!