Saturday, September 25, 2010

today's culinary attempt

Today, I'll be making Italian-style polenta for the first time. You might say that "Italian-style polenta" is a redundancy, to which I'd reply, "Oho, but it is not!" For you see, polenta is merely the Italian designation for a product known in America by another name, a far uglier name: corn grits. To make your corn grits Italian style, you have to add ingredients like parmesan cheese and (optionally) olive oil. I might lace mine with a bit of garlic as well, just to up the peninsularity of the dish.

I'm currently puzzling over what to do for protein. I've got tilapia, shrimp, Italian sausage, and chicken, which leads me to think that I could either go in a mutant gumbo/jambalaya direction, or stick with the Italian theme and somehow incorporate, say, three of those four proteins in a tomato-based sauce to pour atop the polenta. We'll see. If things come out beautifully, I might foodblog the results. If not... I'll talk about the disaster, but won't offer images of it.


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2 comments:

Elisson said...

Even food disasters can be instructive. And entertaining.

Kevin Kim said...

I went and read your horror story about the weevil chili. As a self-respecting Korean, I have to ask how you allowed the chili powder to be neglected long enough to acquire weevils. Even when I cook just for myself, the chili powder runs out pretty quickly.

Hell, forget Korean-- how could someone living in Texas allow that to happen? The chili god, down inside his lava pit, is writhing in fury.