I’ve been terrible about updating, I know. But hear me out. The last few weeks, I still haven’t been very mobile. I’ve been limping stiffly around, hurting after standing too much, wanting mostly to lie down….all of the time. Between that and the holidays that we had to travel all around for, I haven’t been cooking hardly at all. I mean there have been soups, sandwiches, nachos, but nothing really worth documenting.
And add to that, I start back to school on MONDAY. Holy crap. I still haven’t really wrapped my head around that. I have a really tough schedule ahead of me and won’t have too much time to cook very elaborate dinners. So my plan is this. I will try at least once a week to cook a real good meal and document it on here. I’ll also try to document our weekly potluck dinners more regularly, and get better about documenting dinners out. Overall, I hope to still be active on here, but it might not be as original for the next few months.
So, onto more interesting things. Over the holidays, I found an apron from when I worked at Caribou Coffee in college. I’ve been needing an apron for a while! How do I look?
I made homemade polenta today for this recipe. I’ve had polenta before, of course, and even cooked polenta at home – but only from the store-bought package. Today I made it from scratch – cornmeal and water! To make it, I needed coarse cornmeal. I went to like three different stores, but couldn’t find a single package that said specifically “coarse.” So finally I just picked one that sounded normal and not fine-ground. It looks coarse-ish.
The instructions for polenta that I found on a variety of recipes said to pour the cornmeal into boiling water in a steady stream. I don’t know if it was that my cornmeal was too powdery or what, but I couldn’t figure out how to get it into the water in a steady stream. I tried my best to shake it in steadily so I wouldn’t form lumps.
The thing about making homemade polenta is that you have to keep stirring it constantly at low heat. That stuff thickens up quick – and you have to stir for about 15 minutes! My arm was getting tired by the end, when I got to pour the polenta in a loaf pan to cool completely.
And then when it was cooled and firmed, I turned the polenta…loaf? out and cut it into pieces. I have no idea what to do with any polenta I have left over. Anyone have good ideas for polenta usage?
Yes, those are Worf and Gowron action figures keeping watch over my polenta.
While the polenta was cooling, I made the tomato sauce – using my AWESOME immersion blender. I have to admit, I love using all of my handy new kitchen tools.
I was smart and did all this work this morning. Then when it came time to make the whole dish tonight, I just layered the sauce, polenta, and fontina cheese into a baking dish (I ommitted the gorgonola cheese because P doesn’t really dig bleu cheese, and I thought he might not favor the gorgonzola in this dish) and put it in the oven.
I also baked some little tilapia filets – and when I say little, I mean little. They come in at a whopping .20 pounds each. No matter..this polenta dish looks quite filling! OK, so it’s sort of a weird pairing, but whatever. And it sort of achieves my goal of making the fish more of a side than a main.
For the filets, I just sprinkled some lime juice and salt and pepper on them. And I used my nifty little marble mortar and pestle Christmas gift to crush the peppercorns (thanks, Mom)!
I threw the fish in when the polenta had a few minutes left…mmm, that polenta looks good with the melty fontina cheese all over it!
After only 25 minutes, everything was done and ready to be served! The polenta dish sort of came apart when I was plating it, so I got a shot of P’s plate because it looked better. And it tastes great! A bit of fish with a bite of the polenta gratin or casserole or whatever it’s called was delightful. The fish added some extra texture that I think the polenta would have lacked. It sort of reminded me of something we might get at a local restaurant. Pretty good!
