Monello's Delightful Polentoni

Executive chef Fabrizio Cavallini with three polentas at Monello

Terrones and polentones. In Italy, these may be cast as pejoratives by their opposites. Northerners calling the southerners terrones, in reference to their agricultural roots, while the southerners refer to northerners as polentones, or big polenta, calling attention to the main culinary staple of the ages in that region. And, for the record, these are the polite explanations.

You could be called worse, jokes Guido Nistri, a self-described polentone and owner with his wife Valentina Di Pietro of Little Italy's Bencotto and now Monello, restaurants that celebrate the Northern Italian cuisine of their childhoods.

So, when offered the opportunity to hang out with executive chef--and polentone--Fabrizio Cavallini at Monello, what else would I want to learn about but polenta?

In and of itself, polenta is not at all difficult to make. Time consuming but not difficult. All you need is the corn meal -- white or yellow -- along with water and a bit of salt. When you buy the cornmeal, look for words like traditional stoneground or "Bramata" (mill) on the label. Cavallini, who was raised in Emilia-Romagna, tells me you can find these at Filippi's, Mona Lisa, and Whole Foods.

What makes polenta special is what you do with it. It's the blank canvas for far reaching flavors. From simple butter and grated Parmigiano Reggiano to elaborate sauces with long-braised meats. Take a look at this very clever and flavorful dish that will appear on Monello's Easter brunch menu:

White polenta with black truffles, two fried eggs, and mortadella

Cavallini explained to me that it's polenta, not pasta that's been the staple of Italian tables for generations. Pasta was considered food of the wealthy up until just after World War II when it became easier to manufacture and then popularized. Polenta--and rice--was always cheap and filling. Perfect for the lower classes who had few resources. Yellow polenta, said Cavallini, is by far the more popular version in Northern Italy, with stronger flavors and greater texture. White polenta is mild and, once cooked, very creamy--not unlike a childhood porridge. Neither is better or worse than the other. It's what you do with it. While the two polentas were cooking, he pulled some white polenta out of the pot and into a little bowl, added a little Parmigiano and then drizzled some syrupy saba (a grape juice reduction) over it, which is how he ate it at home as a youngster.

Traditionally, polenta was made in slanted copper pots, necessary back in the day, when polenta was cooked over an open fire in a fireplace. Today, chefs like Cavallini prefer using upright aluminum pots, which work well with a stove flame and keep the polenta from burning. Typically Cavallini uses a gallon of water to a pound of raw polenta, adding salt "a gusto"--to your liking.

Bring the water to a boil, slowly add the polenta and salt, reduce the heat, and start stirring--a whisk or a wooden spoon are equally fine. Now, you don't have to make a career of it. You can certainly walk away, but return frequently to stir and make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pot. It'll take 40 to 50 minutes until it's thick and ready.

With white polenta, you also have the option of substituting water with milk, or adding butter or cream after about 25 minutes of cooking to add even more creaminess and richness to the dish.

Is a film forming along the sides of your pot while the polenta is cooking? Fabulous! Once you've poured out the polenta, peel the film off the pot and fry it up to get an Italian version of a tortilla.

I experienced several versions of Monello's polenta. The first was a porcini sauce on white polenta I'd enjoyed there before. Cavallini rehydrates dried porcini, then sautés them in olive oil with onions and garlic for about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, he's got fresh, sliced shitakes sautéing in olive oil and garlic. He adds those to the porcini to create a sauce that melds the meaty texture of the shitakes with the powerful flavor of the porcinis. Over the white polenta it goes, sprinkled with ricotta, Parmigiano, bread crumbs, and parsley.

 

Cavallini then pulled out a couple of sauté pans and heated up some prepared red sauce. In one pan he added sweet Italian sausages. In the other pork ribs. You could also do this with firm fish or bacalaa--or vegetables like eggplant, fennel, or zucchini.

The final polenta was a surprise--and a delightful one. White polenta topped with thick slices of gorgonzola. A feast of white--very rich, with big popping flavors from the cheese.

And, don't forget. Leftover polenta is a terrific thing to have. Pour it into ramekins or an oblong container and keep it in the refrigerator. If it's made with water, it could last for a week just fine. Take it out, slice it, and fry it. Layer it with cheese and vegetables and bake it. Coat it with olive oil, dust with grated cheese, and bake until the outside is crispy and the inside creamy. Pour a tomato sauce over it. In other words, use your imagination and your leftovers.



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Fall Fest: Cooking for One and My Mad Freezer Stash

Are you single? As in live alone, cook alone, and usually eat alone? This would be me. When coupled people talk about how they cook for one, they tend to be talking about the occasional evening when their significant other happens to be out of town or at a meeting. When I talk about cooking for one, I mean one -- day in and day out.

This is not a complaint. This is my life and I'm perfectly happy. However, cooking for one can be a challenge, starting with buying for one. So, when our Fall Fest 2010 Mad Stash theme came up this week I wasn't thinking about what fearless leader Margaret Roach intended--freezing, preserving, or drying in anticipation of getting through the dead of winter. I was thinking about what I do year round to save a little money, keep food from going bad (or eating too much of it at one sitting), or to be able to enjoy the kind of cooking typically done for a family--like making big pots of soup, or lasagna, or baking bread.

See, I live in San Diego, and while we certainly address seasonality, we have gorgeous produce year round. We don't need to "put away" for the winter. Maybe I don't have fresh local strawberries in January, but I have access to magnificent  apples, pears,  persimmons, and citrus. And, a container of smashed strawberries in the freezer left over from my summer strawberry freezer jam extravaganza (I have jars of the jam in the freezer, too). Did I buy too much Swiss chard last week? No problem. I'll just remove the ribs and put the leaves in the food processor with garlic, olive oil, honey, and parmesan cheese to make Swiss chard pesto. And put that in the freezer for later.

Now, sometimes I get carried away at the farmers market and buy too much. Or my schedule changes and I end up with several unexpected evenings out. And my poor produce languishes in the fridge. If I can catch it in time, I can create something that turns veggies just this side of spoiled into something sublime--then freeze it.

This is what happened over the summer when I had zucchini, eggplant, heirloom tomatoes, peppers, leeks, and I forget what else. I got busy that week and it sat. Then I burned my right palm pretty severely making a tomato tarte tatin. My plans for cooking up all that produce were dashed. Until I called my mom. She came over the next day and the two of us had a wonderful afternoon in my kitchen making what I'm calling my "refrigerator sauce."

There's no real recipe here. What we did--and what I often do--is prep the veggies for roasting, which brings out the sugars in each. Use a good-sized non-stick baking sheet. I don't use foil for this because I want to scrape up the juices from the tomatoes and add them to the sauce. In this case, we cut eggplant, zucchini, onions, sweet peppers, and leeks into chunks. We halved the tomatoes and tossed in whole, peeled garlic cloves. We tossed the veggies in olive oil and sprinkled them with a little salt and pepper. The pans went into a 400-degree oven and roasted for about 20 minutes. (Just check on them periodically after the first 10 minutes. Some vegetables will cook faster than others and you should remove them from the oven so the rest can continue roasting.)

Once they're finished roasting, heat up a Dutch oven or heavy pot, add some olive oil and a little fresh, minced garlic, then all those now gorgeously browned pieces of vegetables to the pot--with the juices. Unless you have a ton of tomatoes, you might want to add some canned fire-roasted crushed tomatoes. Then add fresh herbs--basil, thyme, oregano, parsley, or whatever else you have on hand--along with salt and pepper. Let the mixture simmer for awhile (20 minutes or so). At this point, you can pull out your immersion blender and pulverize the vegetables until you have the texture you want. (No immersion blender? No worries--just let the mixture cool and transfer it to a blender or food processor.) Taste and adjust your seasonings. Let it simmer on low for another half hour to thicken and let the flavors come together. Remove from the heat and let cool. Then transfer to plastic storage containers to put in the freezer. Be sure to label the sauce, including the date you made it. I keep a cordless label maker in my kitchen so I don't get lazy about it. It's so frustrating to open the freezer and try to figure out what mystery foods you have and how long they've been in suspended animation.

So, how have I used the sauce? It obviously goes great with pasta. Melissa Clark recently wrote a terrific piece in the New York Times about whole wheat pasta and I bought her favorite: a package of Bionaturae organic whole wheat spaghetti. I'm with her. It has a wonderful texture and nutty flavor that I've become somewhat addicted to. It pairs well with hearty sauces and this refrigerator sauce is truly hearty--even without meat, although you could add ground beef to make a luscious ragu.

I also used the refrigerator sauce as the base for pizza. And, where did I get the dough? Yep, out of the freezer. See I make a terrific pizza dough but it's too much for one. So I divide it into quarters, roll them into balls, secure each ball tightly in plastic wrap, and then put them into a labeled freezer bag. Over the weekend, I pulled out a ball and let it defrost overnight in the refrigerator. It was fine for me to use the following day. It shaped nicely into a six-inch personal pizza, which I topped with the sauce, slices of Field Roast vegan Mexican Chipotle sausage (leftover from another story I researched), slices of garlic, and grated/cubed Piave Vecchio, a great fall cows milk cheese from the Italian Alps that I bought from Taste's Mary Palmer.

The pizza made for a great, easy lunch. After all, it's just a matter of heating the oven to 500 degrees, shaping the dough, adding the toppings, and baking for all of 10 minutes.

A great, healthy, meal for one.

So, what does "Mad Stash" mean to my Fall Fest colleagues?

Alison at Food2: Break Out the Stash
Kirsten at Food Network: Roasting Pumpkin Seeds
Liz at Healthy Eats: Mad Squash Stash
Michelle at Cooking Channel: Save Em' While You Can
Caroline at the Wright Recipes: Brandied Apple Butter
Nicole of Pinch My Salt: Spiced Pear Butter 
Alana at Eating From the Ground Up: On the Chest Freezer
Cate of Sweet Nicks: Roasted Butternut Squash Salad with Warm Cider Vinaigrette 
 Margaret at A Way to Garden: Everything Into the Pot, Freezer, Cellar
Todd and Diane: Persimmon Overload, and Persimmon Fool Pudding 

Now It's Your Turn to Join Fall Fest 2010!
This collaborative effort won't be much fun without you! The more info we all give, the more we'll all enjoy fall's harvest. Have a recipe or tip that fits any of our weekly themes? You can contribute in various ways, big or small.

• Contribute a whole post, or a comment—whatever you wish. It’s meant to be fun, viral, fluid. No pressure, just delicious. 
• Simply leave your tip or recipe or favorite links in the comments below a Summer Fest post on my blog any upcoming Wednesday, and then go visit my collaborators and do the same.

The cross-blog event idea works best when you leave your recipe or favorite links (whether to your own blog or someone else’s) at all the host blogs. That way, they are likely to be seen by the widest audience. Everyone benefits, and then we're all cooking with some great ideas. Or go big: Publish entire posts of your own if you wish, and grab the big Fall Fest 2010 pumpkin badge above (illustrated by Matt of Mattbites). We'll also be tweeting using #fallfood as our hashtag. Here's the schedule:

Sept. 1: Sweet and Spicy Peppers
Sept. 8: Garlic
Sept. 15: White (or colorful “white”…but not sweet) Potatoes
Sept. 22: Spinach
Sept. 29: Apples
Oct. 6: Fall Salads
Oct. 13: Pumpkin and Winter Squash
Oct. 20: Pears
Oct. 27: “Mad Stash” (as in what you’re freezing/canning/drying, etc.)
Nov. 3: Root veggies
Nov. 10: Brassicas: incl. Brussels Sprouts, Cauliflower, Cabbage or other
Nov. 17: Sweet Potatoes
Nov. 24: Bounty to Be Grateful For

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Taste of Little Italy Returns on Nov. 4

This is one of those "wish I could be in two places at one time" moments. I'll be in Phoenix next week when Taste of Little Italy takes place on Wednesday, Nov. 4 from 5 to 9 p.m.

Among the participating restaurants are Anthology, Burger Lounge, Indigo Grill, Mimmo's, Mona Lisa, Po Pazzo, Rice at the W Hotel, Cafe Zucchero, The Waterfront Grille, and Filippi's Pizza Grotto. There will also be music and entertainment from musicians Regina Leonard and Luis Max and Blue Moon.

Tickets are $35 in advance and can be purchased online at the Taste of Little Italy website. They'll cost $40 at the door. Included with the tickets is a voucher for two people to enjoy Chef Eric Bauer's "Fresh Vibe Tuesday" at Anthology during the month of November.


Ticket proceeds will benefit the Little Italy Association.


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