An easier, faster polenta? Thank you very mush

In Italy's Piedmont region, where polenta may be better loved than anywhere else on Earth, the cornmeal mush is a food of the fall. When the air turns crisp with the first frost and people await the arrival of snow, housewives labor over their cooking pots, stirring, stirring as coarse meal slurried in water gradually thickens and becomes sticky and delicious. To serve, it's poured out onto a wooden board in a rich golden puddle like a harvest moon.

Cesare Pavese wrote about it in The Moon and the Bonfires, a nostalgic novel about a Piedmontese expatriate's return home: "These are the best days of the year. Picking grapes, stripping vines, squeezing the fruit, are no kind of work; the heat has gone and it's not cold yet; under a few light clouds you eat rabbit with your polenta and go after mushrooms."

Here polenta belongs to these damp, chilly days of winter.

Probably more important, we don't really go in for that whole "laboring over cooking pots" thing.

Nor do we need to. You can make a really good polenta with no more effort than it would take to bake a boxed cake.

Don't believe me? I don't blame you. I went for years trying different shortcuts for making polenta and rejecting every one. Most sacrifice flavor for ease. I've tried at least a half-dozen of them - in a covered pan, in a double boiler, even in the microwave. Some cooks who should know better have even suggested you can simply shorten the cooking time. I've tried that too, but even the best of these shortcuts didn't come close to the deep, toasted corn flavor of a true long-stirred polenta.

As a result, my family and I ate polenta only on those rare occasions when my ambition matched my mood - in other words, only a couple of times a year.

But now I serve polenta any time I feel like it. And these days I'm feeling like it a lot. Here's how easy preparing polenta can be: Pour water into a wide, deep pot; stir in polenta; bake; stir; bake; stir; done.

And it works! I can't tell you why this shortcut works so well. All I know is that it does. I first wrote about it more than 10 years ago when my old friend Paula Wolfert called me about it. Paula is the kind of cook who despairs over people not rolling their own couscous, so when she recommends any kind of shortcut, I listen.

She had found it in Michele Anna Jordan's cookbook Polenta. But a little later she called again to say she'd also found it on the back of bags of Golden Pheasant polenta, a very good artisanal brand out of San Francisco. When I called the owner, he said he'd learned it years before from a friend's mother.

Though it seems impossible to determine who first discovered this technique, what's certain is that it has been repeatedly rediscovered since. A couple of years ago a writer on Chowhound took credit for it, in a post titled "OK . . . OK. . . . I'm giving it up, my secret way to cook polenta that is so easy you will do it again and again. . . ."

Well, the secret isn't really theirs any more than it is mine, or Paula's or Michele's, or the guy from Golden Pheasant's friend's mother's. But the sentiment is certainly spot-on: After you try this method, you'll use it again and again.

There is some confusion about the nature of polenta. It is coarsely ground cornmeal; depending on the region, it can be either white or yellow corn. Can you use regular cornmeal? Certainly. I made cornmeal and polenta versions of this recipe side by side, using exactly the same method. The results were slightly different, but only slightly.

Because cornmeal is more finely ground, it set up a little more quickly and became a little thicker than polenta, more like custard than cream of wheat. And the polenta was a little more golden in color and richer in flavor.

I prefer polenta to cornmeal, and preferably Golden Pheasant, though it can be hard to find. (It pops up occasionally at local markets, but you can order it from www.granzellas.com, where it's $3.25 for a 11/2-pound bag. Buy several to save on shipping and then store them in the freezer).

But I would certainly use cornmeal if I didn't have real polenta on hand. I even prefer it to the so-called instant polentas, which are par-cooked and dried and never seem to have much flavor.

And don't even get me started on those tubes of precooked polenta. They're fine for frying or grilling (searing covers a multitude of sins), but they're not in the ballpark when it comes to soft polenta flavor.

Well-made polenta is good by itself - just stir in a lot of butter and Parmigiano. But it's even better when served with a sauce. The traditional accompaniment is some kind of long-braised ragu, made with beef, pork or, yes, a Piedmontese rabbit.

But there are a couple of good sauces that can be made in no more time than it takes the polenta to cook.

One of my favorites is made from mushrooms and not a whole lot more - but you use them three ways. Saute quartered mushrooms until they begin to brown. Add some dried porcinis that you've softened in hot water. And then finally add the strained soaking water.

Sure, there are a few other ingredients - some garlic, onion, white wine, a bit of tomato paste to add depth and thicken the sauce, and some chopped herbs at the end - but the flavor is all wild mushrooms.

For that reason, you want to use the best dried mushrooms you can find, and as much of them as you can afford. This recipe is good with a half-ounce of mushrooms (the standard supermarket envelope), but it's even better with 1 or 11/2 ounces.

If you want a meatier, more traditional ragu, you can still have that even if you don't want to spend a few hours braising pork. Use chicken thighs - they'll cook quickly and still stay moist. For depth of flavor, add browned Italian sausage (either sweet or hot will work fine), and then slip in some unpitted green olives near the end. The whole thing should take less than 45 minutes to fix.

That's good, because we've got better things to do than wait around for snow while we stand stirring polenta.

Makes 6 servings

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8 cups water

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups polenta

2 to 3 tablespoons butter

1/4 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano

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1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. In a 3- to 4-quart oven-proof pot, combine the water, salt, polenta, and butter. Bake, uncovered, for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Stir polenta and bake for 10 more minutes. Remove the pot from the oven and stir in the grated cheese. Set aside 5 minutes to rest before serving.

2. To serve, spoon the polenta into each of 6 warmed shallow pasta bowls. Serve immediately.

Per servings: 221 calories; 5 grams protein; 36 grams carbohydrates; no sugar; 5 grams fat; 13 milligrams cholesterol; 465 milligrams sodium, 3 grams dietary fiber.EndText

Makes 6 servings

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1/2 to 1 1/2 ounces dried porcini mushrooms

2 cups hot water

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 garlic cloves, peeled and cut in half

1 pound fresh mushrooms (cremini, portobello, white button, or any mix), quartered

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons minced onion or shallot

1/2 cup dry white wine

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 teaspoon minced rosemary

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

1/2 teaspoon red wine vinegar, or to taste

Grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

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1. In a medium bowl, cover the dried mushrooms with hot water and set aside to soak until rehydrated, at least 30 minutes.

2. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil with the split cloves of garlic and cook over medium-high heat until the garlic begins to brown on all sides, 4 to 5 minutes. Add the fresh mushrooms and the salt and cook, stirring, until the mushrooms give off their liquid, about 10 minutes. If the garlic begins to scorch, remove and discard it.

3. While the fresh mushrooms are cooking, lift the dried mushrooms from the soaking liquid with your hand, reserving the soaking liquid. Squeeze the mushrooms dry, draining the liquid back into the bowl and reserving it. Chop the dried mushrooms coarsely. Add to the cooked fresh mushrooms. Decant the soaking liquid through a strainer into a measuring cup, tilting it and pouring slowly to leave behind any grit in the bottom of the bowl. You should have 11/2 to 2 cups.

4. Add the minced onion and increase the heat to high, until the mushrooms are nearly dry, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the white wine and cook until that evaporates, 5 more minutes.

5. Reduce the temperature to medium and stir in the tomato paste. Cook, stirring, until the paste is mixed in and has begun to toast, darkening and losing its raw smell, about 3 minutes. Add 11/2 cups of the strained soaking liquid and gently simmer over medium-low heat until the mushrooms are silky and the juices are thickened and creamy, stirring occasionally, about 20 minutes. Any extra mushroom broth can be refrigerated, tightly covered, and added to soup.

6. Stir in the rosemary and parsley. Taste and add just enough red wine vinegar to give the sauce depth. Add more salt if necessary. Keep warm until ready to serve.

7. To serve with polenta, spoon over about one-third cup of mushrooms per serving and sprinkle grated Parmigiano-Reggiano over top.

Per serving, without polenta: 95 calories; 4 grams protein; 7 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams sugar; 5 grams fat; no cholesterol; 416 milligrams sodium; 2 grams dietary fiber.EndText

Makes 6 servings

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6 chicken thighs (about 2 pounds)

Salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 Italian sausages (about 3/4 pound)

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 cup red wine

2 cups crushed tomatoes (about 2/3 of a 28-ounce can)

8 to 10 whole green olives

1/3 cup chopped parsley

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1. Trim the chicken thighs of any excess skin and fat, pat dry, and season lightly on both sides with a pinch of salt.

2. Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. When it is quite hot, add the chicken thighs, skin side down, and brown well, about 15 minutes. If the chicken sticks to the pan, keep cooking: When the skin has browned enough, it will release. Turn and cook on the other side just until it loses its raw appearance, about 5 minutes. Remove to a plate and keep warm.

3. Pour off all but about 1 tablespoon of the fat and return the pan to the heat. Remove the sausage from the skins and crumble into the pan in hazelnut-sized chunks. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the sausage is well browned on all sides, about 10 minutes.

4. Add the onion and cook until it wilts, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 3 minutes.

5. Add the red wine and cook, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan to release all the browned bits. Continue cooking until the wine reduces to a syrup, about 5 minutes.

6. Stir in the tomatoes. Cook until they begin to change color from bright red to brick, about 5 minutes. Return the chicken to the pan, skin side up, and scatter the green olives into the sauce.

7. Reduce the heat to low and cook until the chicken can be penetrated easily with a paring knife or carving fork, about 30 minutes. Taste and add more salt if needed and sprinkle with parsley.

Per serving, without polenta: 366 calories; 25 grams protein; 12 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams sugar; 21 grams fat; 81 milligrams cholesterol; 667 milligrams sodium; 2 grams dietary fiber.

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