Kitchen Redemption

I feel better now.

A little over a week ago, I had a complete kitchen disaster — something that is extremely rare for me. Which is not to say that I don’t ever end up cooking something that doesn’t come out just so. I don’t often use recipes, and even when I do, I usually tend to go off-book in some way or other. So, I’ll sometimes end up with something I don’t like as well as I expected. Or I’ll overcook something, or run into some other minor problem, usually because I’m easily distracted — or due to the fact that I’m extremely clumsy. But, normally, I end up with edible food when all is said and done.

However, this was not the case when I recently attempted to cook polenta. It was an impulse buy at the grocery store (the polenta was next to the gnocchi on the shelf at Schnuck’s), fueled by my distress over the fact that they no longer serve polenta as a side dish at Texas de Brazil. (We ate there instead of watching the Super Bowl this year. Unamerican? Maybe. But it was 50% off, and we still got home in time to see the good part of the game.)

This was not the first time that EAToo and I had tried to make polenta. (That time, the impulse buy was his.) It didn’t work then, either, which I sort of wrote off as a fluke at the time. But, again, no method of preparation worked. We tried the Foreman Grill (yeah, I know, but we live in an apartment). We tried a skillet with olive oil. We even tried baking it in the oven, which sort of worked but took well over half and hour. And none of it was really edible — just greasy, limp, and generally funky.

So, the next day, we went to the parents’ house for dinner. I had bought more polenta, and enlisted my mother to show me what I was doing wrong. She tried, with the same results that EAToo and I had the night before. She said she figured it was the product, and suggested that I try making the polenta from scratch and see if that didn’t work out better.

This week, we did. On Wednesday night, while EAToo made our dinner, I worked the slow process of making the polenta. I still went off-book — I just can’t help myself — cooking the polenta in a mixture of chicken stock and cream, much the same way I make grits, rather than using water (as recommended on the package). After adding parmesan cheese and a bit of butter, and stirring it for the requisite 30 minutes, I poured (scooped) it into a plastic-wrap-lined pan, let it cool, and chilled it overnight.

Well, like I said, I feel better now. It was definitely the polenta and not me. Whew! Last night, I sliced the polenta, and EAToo cooked it (on the electric griddle, in a bit of olive oil) to perfection. A couple of the pieces were still a little softer than I’d like, and I’m already thinking ahead about how to tinker with that the next time.

But there will definitely be a next time. All said, it was very labor intensive, and not something I’ll make very often, because I simply don’t have as much time to cook as I’d like. (And also because it’s probably a heart attack on a plate.) But at least now I know that I can.