Polenta - classic recipe

Well, I think to myself: if you came here, it means you are interested, and specifically in the classics, and not in what is written on the package. So, my dears, I have to disappoint you. Right from the start. Look at this photo. Do you have such a cauldron? No? If not, then you will not be able to make classic polenta, no matter what recipe you use. Because classic polenta is made in a thick-walled copper cauldron over a wood fire. Enough!

Over a wood fire does not mean "on a campfire". In Italy, up until the end of the twentieth century, wood stoves were very actively used in villages. And not only in Italy, by the way. If you, say, have a wood stove at your dacha, then you have a chance to make classic polenta. The only catch is a thick-walled copper cauldron. Both the thickness of the walls and the material are very important. Copper is the most heat-conducting material of all those used for cookware. It heats up very quickly and cools down just as quickly when you remove the cookware from the fire. And the thickness of the boiler allows you to use it in high heat, at temperatures at which modern thin copper cookware with alloying simply deforms and changes color. In short, a pure copper old thick-walled boiler is a THING!!! But they are no longer produced. Ours is an inherited one. But I don’t have a wood stove, so even I can’t show you the recipe for classic polenta, even with the right boiler. Haven’t I scared you off yet, will you continue reading?

Polenta is an old recipe, but not exactly from ancient times. Corn came to Europe after the discovery of America, and in warm countries it seriously displaced other, more capricious and less productive cereal crops. In Italy, accordingly, polenta replaced pulse: a porridge of ground spelt, millet, barley and emmer, known since the time of Ancient Rome. In short, the grain has changed, but the recipe has remained. So the technology for making polenta is a hell of a lot of years old, and in our refined conditions of the 21st century, it is very difficult to make it in its classic form.

I have tried classic polenta - exactly once in my life, my father-in-law cooked it when my parents came to meet. My father-in-law's name was Giuseppe Maniago, he was from South Tyrol, whose inhabitants the Italians from the plains call "polenta eaters". In short, I know the recipe, I can tell you about it, but I can't cook it, because it is simply impossible to install a domed copper boiler on a ceramic electric stove! I cook polenta in a cast-iron flat-bottomed cauldron adapted for electric stoves. Will it suit you?

The main secret of classic polenta, which distinguishes it from the product that has replaced it now, is the use of two types of grain, with different grinding calibers. In Italy you should take the coarsest and medium grind, but I have never seen this anywhere except in the mills there, so in Germany I make it from corn grits and corn flour. Using two calibers gives a completely different consistency of the dish than with homogeneous flour. But the preparation requires slightly more complex calculations than from one type of flour.

The ingredients for polenta are not counted in grams and milliliters, but in volumes. For this recipe, I converted them to grams, but this is not the traditional approach. It is necessary to explain how this was done normally. You can’t imagine an Italian man at a wood-burning stove, measuring flour and water using scales and a measuring cup, can you?

Our Giuseppe used the following ratio of cereals for classic polenta: 1 measure of coarse grinding - 2 measures of fine grinding. And water - 4 times more than corn grits in total. So, 12 cups of water, 2 cups of fine cornmeal, and 1 cup of coarse cornmeal. A cup, a bowl, a mug - it doesn't matter, you know? Historically, there was a big pot, and there was some small container that was used to measure out the water and the grits.

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