'La Bella Polenta' and Venetian Style Appetizers

First of all, you HAVE to watch part of this video, it's adorable. Leave it to the Italians to make up an awesome song about making polenta. (By the way, I think the young woman on the far right is in the market for a husband- you'll see what I mean.)  Oh and, be warned: the song sticks in your head.

As a person who has only recently acquired the funds to travel to Europe without the assistance of my parents, I am not a seasoned traveler and therefore this isn't one of those braggy posts. I was lucky enough to stay in Venice in June, and while in general I wouldn't say it is the food capital of Italy or anything, they did have some interesting dishes. Unfortunately for us most of the famous dishes involved seafood. My husband doesn't like seafood at all (although he periodically tries it, just to make sure) and I'm allergic to shellfish. By the way, if you're ever there and you need to communicate that you have a seafood allergy you say, "Sono allergico ai crostace."

Of course pasta and gnocchi are served a lot, but they also serve a hefty dose of risotto and polenta (cornmeal mash) too. The best thing about Venetian food though is the cicchetti, tiny little happy-hour appetizers (pretty much Italian tapas.) There was salt-cod salad, truffled ham* (ridiculously good), fried cheese balls, grilled octopus...so many tasty things. 
 

*This is truffled ham. If anyone knows where to get it in California, tell me!

Instead of crostini toasts as a base for spreads and cold cuts, they sometimes used little grilled polenta squares. I was raised in Arizona, so to me they taste a little bit like an open faced tamale. Here's my recipe:

4 cups of low sodium or homemade vegetable broth
1 cup of dark yellow cornmeal 
1 teaspoon salt (if you use water instead of broth, use 2 tsp.) 
1/4 teaspoon white pepper (use cayenne or nothing if you don't have white)
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup marscapone cheese or thick cream
2 rounded tablespoons finely grated Romano or Parmesan cheese
a big glug of Tabasco or other hot sauce (I told you, I'm from Arizona) 

Bring the broth, salt and pepper to a boil, and add the cornmeal slowly, whisking the whole time. Stir on high for a few minutes, until the mixture thickens- like oatmeal thick. Turn the temperature down to as low as it will go and continue cooking on low for another 30 minutes, frequently giving it a really good stir with the whisk. 

Add in the butter, cheese and Tabasco at the end, mix thoroughly and vigorously, and then pour it out into a 9"x13" greased pan. Try to even out the polenta as best you can with your spatula, I ended up using a cube of cold butter as a flattener because it doesn't stick. 

Let the polenta cool on the counter for ten minutes, then put it in the refrigerator, covered, to cool completely. Cut the polenta into square or diamond shapes, and then you can either brush the shapes with oil or butter and put them on the grill, or just grill them in a non-stick pan until they are brown, but not black at all, on both sides. 

Here are some basic Americanized toppings you might want to try. Because there is cheese and butter in the polenta, I think putting cheese on top would be redundant, but you do what you like: 

-Fresh or canned salmon salad made with capers, dill and mayonnaise
-Fresh chopped tomatoes mixed with very finely diced anchovy, garlic and oil
-Prosciutto di Parma and chopped green Castelvetrano olives
-Bacon, pepper jelly and almond slices

(This one has Prosciutto, hot pepper jelly and roasted Marcona almonds)



-Roasted chiles, chicken and salsa
-Basil and sun dried tomato in oil or tomato jam and balsamic vinegar
-Thinly sliced steak cooked very briefly and covered in lemon juice, olive oil and parsley
-Leftover BBQ pulled pork and apricot jam or fresh apricot
-Cut the squares big enough to make a polenta Eggs Benedict with bacon, eggs and Hollandaise sauce

You get the idea.  
 

The Sacro e Profano in the San Polo neighborhood of Venice, worth a visit!

Savory Cheese-Puff Donuts

These appetizer donuts are really easy but there's kind of a short window of time to eat them in. They are screaming hot when they are just done, but they're not quite as exciting (though still tasty) when they've gone completely cold. My friend Trish has this great vintage warming plate thing that would be great to serve these on, but I don't know anyone else who has one of those, so just eat them within 20 minutes of making them.

Ingredients:
1 1/8 cup all purpose flour
1 cup water
1/2 teaspoon dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon sugar 
1 teaspoon dried summer savory (or dried mint or parsley if you don't have savory)
 Also:
-1 small block of really sharp or strong flavored cheese, cut into about 1/2 inch cubes. I had sharp Irish Cheddar. Blue cheese would be good too, if it is a kind that isn't too moist and crumbly.

-Enough corn oil, plus a splash of olive oil for deep frying

-a small jar of pepper jelly, just heated through until it's syrupy 

Mix the first nine ingredients in a bowl and then cover the bowl with some plastic wrap and leave the batter on the counter to rise for one hour.

Heat the corn oil in your deep fryer or small pot until the oil is around 360 degrees, (or just wing it). When the oil is hot, take several cubes of the cheese at a time and drop them on top of the batter. Using a tablespoon, very gently cover each cube with a bit of the gooey, stretchy batter. Scoop the individual cubes out, now covered in dough, by the spoonful and drop into the hot oil. They will puff up right away, and then you fry them for a few minutes per side until they are a deep golden brown. To be honest, the ones int he picture are a tiny bit under-done but I was impatient and hungry.

 Let them drain on a paper towel for a minute or two, salting and peppering them like you do with other fried foods. When all of your cheese is used up you can still make cheese-less donuts if there is leftover dough, or just toss it out, it's not like flour is that expensive.

Serve the donuts right away, drizzled or coated with the warm pepper jelly. You could also use warm honey with chopped jalapenos in it, or you could use a syrupy balsamic vinegar reduction.

Herbed Huffkins

Kentish Huffkins originate in Kent county, UK, as you might imagine, and are lovely little bread rolls, sometimes seen with little depressions in the middle. They remind me somewhat of biscuit-like dinner rolls and you can slice them in half and use them for sandwiches or hamburgers because of the shape. I first read about them in Jane Grigson's British Cookery book, and I've been a big fan of them since.

Today I've decided to change the traditional recipe a bit and add in some herbs and cheese. 

Now the traditional recipe goes something like this:
1 1/2 lbs. flour
2 teaspoons yeast
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 oz butter
2 oz lard
1 pint warm water

Mix the dry ingredients (including the yeast), then distribute the fat into it with a large fork or pastry cutter until it is all well mixed in and looks fine and crumbly. Add the pint of warm water and mix until you have a soft sticky dough, but there's no need to knead. Let dough rise for thirty minutes, then roll the dough out on a floured board to about 1 1/2 inches thick, and use a large biscuit cutter to make the rolls. Actually, you don't even have to use the rolling pin, this dough is so soft, you can just kind of flour it and spread it out flat with your hands! IF you use a 4 inch biscuit cutter, you'll get about 10 huffkins.

Let the rolls rise another thirty minutes, then poke a dent in the center of each one and bake for about 15-20 minutes at 425 degrees. 

Now to make the herbed version, change out the lard for more butter (so four ounces, or one stick, of butter,) plus add 1 teaspoon each of the following dried herbs and spices to the dry ingredients: thyme, dill, summer savory, extra salt and black pepper, plus 1/4 teaspoon of ground cardamom. If you don't care for dill or don't have it, substitute dried mint or parsley.

After you poke the depressions in your rolls, and right before you pop them in the oven, place a cube of good quality sharp cheddar into each depression. 

Before Baking

A last note about rising times: I am in an old house in California with no air conditioning (yet) so it's quite warm and things are rising very quickly. If your house is cold, you may want to put your  oven on it's lowest setting and let them rise in the oven with the door cracked, or just let them rise a bit longer than the thirty minutes.

They are good for breakfast with butter and scrambled eggs. Also, the dill makes it good with salmon, I had one with some lox, mashed avocado with garlic salt, sliced onion, olive oil and lemon juice and it was really good.

Farmer's Market Walnut and Chard Pie

I did very well at the Sacramento farmer's market on Sunday, everything looked beautiful, and was priced right. I found lots of good veggies and even some potted vegetables and herbs for the garden. Not all of my loot was for eating though, I also got this really pretty ornamental oregano called Kent's Beauty, I can't wait for it to get bigger (I'm an impatient gardener).

Check out the big green onions with the flowers on them, I think they look like little lit candles, I chopped them right up along with the stems!

.

The recipe today, a pie made with Swiss chard, is obviously a savory pie, it's very yummy served cold for lunch or cut in smaller slices for appetizer.

Right out  of the oven

Ingredients:

1 bunch Swiss chard
1 bunch dill weed (chopped)
1 bunch green onions
1 cup walnuts
6 eggs
1/4 cup cornmeal
1 teaspoon plus one pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (omit if you don't have it, don't use fresh)
2 tablespoons olive oil
Sharp cheese for topping (amount is up to you, I used 2 oz feta)
Walnut oil and Balsamic vinegar for drizzling

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put a large pot on the stove on high with a few inches of water  in the bottom. Chop the chard into small chunks and dump in the pan. Heat up just until the mass is wilted down, then drain immediately in a colander. Let it cool.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan. Chop walnuts until you have about a cup roughly chopped. Chop the green onions as well and then add both to the olive oil with a pinch of salt, and fry on high, stirring frequently. 

After five minutes, remove the walnuts and green onions from the heat, and for ease of clean up, instead of using a fresh bowl, just use the pot you already used to boil the chard in as a bowl (dump out the water of course!). To that, add your fresh chopped dill, your eggs, cornmeal and spices. 

Before adding the chard to all of this, take the cooled chard in your hands and squeeze the heck out of it until most of the liquid comes out. It's amazing how a whole bunch of chard now fits easily in your hands! Once everything is in there mix it all very well.

Rub oil all over the inside of a regular glass pie pan, and fill it with the mixture. Sprinkle the top with your favorite cheese and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Let it cool a bit before serving with vinegar and oil drizzled on top.

Peppery Kale and Cheddar Omelette

Cereal, toast, pancakes...all delicious. The problem is, when I eat these carb-a-riffic breakfast foods I feel weak and hungry an hour or two after. So most of the time for breakfast I eat either Greek yogurt with honey, cinnamon and almonds, or eggs cooked in some way with vegetables or herbs. Today's omelette came out extra tasty, so here we go:

2 eggs
2 tablespoons of water or milk
2 teaspoons of olive oil
1 chopped green onion
1 big handful of baby kale (I got a bag of organic at Costco for next to nothing)
salt 
black pepper
nutmeg (don't skip this, it's the best part)
1 slice sharp sharp Tillamook cheddar  (or other sharp cheese)
(grape tomatoes on the side for acidity and color)

Easy peasy, start with a teaspoon of the olive oil in a small non-stick pan over medium heat. Toss in the green onion and kale, salt them ever so slightly, and cook just until the kale wilts down. Remove the kale and onion from the pan and put the other teaspoon of olive oil in. While this is heating, in a bowl whip the heck out of your eggs and water (or milk) and add a good pinch of salt and pepper and a WHISPER (a half-dash?) of nutmeg. 

Pour into the pan and cook. I like to gently push the eggs toward the middle of the pan with my spatula and then tilt the pan around in a circular motion, letting the uncooked egg from the top layer of the omelette run to the sides of the pan and cook there. Once you have just a very thin sheen of uncooked egg on that top layer, place your kale, onion, and your slice of cheese on one half, then use your spatula to flip the other half of the circle to cover everything. 

Turn the heat off and let it sit in the pan for a minute until the cheese melts inside, then serve immediately with an extra sprinkle of good black pepper over the top and some tomatoes on the side.

 This actually kept me going until lunch, so it's eggs for the win.