Delizia!

[annec]

Not sure whether to put this under here or in Food, but anyway .... I've just finished this book by John Dickie A good feed | Review | guardian.co.uk Books
I'm not sure how you would describe it - it's a sort of food history with philosophical digressions. He's particularly good on the ironic status of polenta - once the despised subsistence food of peasants, now lauded by celebrity chefs everywhere.

And I didn't realise pizzas had to overcome disgust at their origin (as street food in the diseased backstreets of Naples) before conquering the world

[Charles Phillips]

[quote=annec;91834 He's particularly good on the ironic status of polenta - once the despised subsistence food of peasants, now lauded by celebrity chefs everywhere.
[/quote]

May I assume you wanted to type iconic rather than ironic? And 'conquering' should have a 'c' inserted...otherwise, it is all cr@p amyway.

[annec]

Insert your "c"'s wherever you want Charles - but leave mine alone!

No, what I meant was that it's ironic that polenta would once have been regarded as little better than chicken feed, since it was the subsistence food of peasants who probably never saw meat from one year's end to the next.

It was also probably at best tasteless and at worst disgusting. However now no self-respecting la-di-da cookbook is without at least one polenta recipe.

[juliancoll]

Polenta is still tasteless and disgusting, no matter how much butter/salt/pepper/cheese you throw into it or how you dress it up by pan griddling little dark brown lines across it. Chicken feed is what it is and chicken feed is what it should remain.

La-di-da cookbooks are libellous!

[Angie and Robert]

I have eaten it at a local festa where it was served with a strong ragu sauce, was actually OK, also in a la de dahish place in Cornwall with a mushroom sauce...very nice, dont seem to be able to recapture this though when I cook it at home, and it always spits back a me in an evil way when I am stirring it in the pot
A.

[Mathematician]

Polenta can be awful or it can be fabulous -- one way to improve your results is to use COARSE, CRACKED cornmeal, not the finely ground stuff -- another way is to find a local grower who will sell or trade it to you. 2x water to 1x coarse cornmeal, sea salt to taste, a tablespoon of XV olive oil (helps damp down the spitting), cook on a very low flame just enough to keep it doing a gentle lava action. Throw in a handful of freshly grated cheese to taste (including crumbled gorgonzola, DH's favorite), serve hot.
Using the coarse cornmeal gives the polenta a better "mouth" feel, and depending on your corn, a much stronger taste, requiring quite a bit of salt. Having grown up on it I love it.