Po' Boys Polenta

The first time I had fried polenta with roasted vegetables on it I was thrilled. Sort of.  I like eating new things, trying new dishes, especially on vacation.  If I eat in ethnic restaurants with food I've never heard of at least once while on vacation, I consider it gold. Several years ago I thought polenta would be one of those new treats.  We were in Eureka Springs, Arkansas at a vegan restaurant where Gene whined annoyingly for meat and I reveled in the menu choices. 

I scooped a bite of the polenta with some caramelly onion and asparagus bits onto my fork, thinking "I'm so cool, suave, and sophisticated.  This is new, something I've never eaten in my life. This is Italian..."  And then bit down into it's crisp outside and creamy inside and thought "Hey, wait a minute! This is fried corn grits!" 

It wasn't new to me but it was delicious and well-remembered.  As a kid I'd grown up eating fried "polenta" for breakfast drowned in real maple syrup.

There actually is a difference between polenta and grits, it's in the processing.  Polenta is coarsely ground regular corn meal.  Grits can either be regular corn or field corn (hominy) that is soaked in an alkaline solution of baking soda or lye and then dried and ground.  Alkaline soaking sounds like it should be a bad thing but in reality it keeps the grits product from losing it's niacin, therefore, it's a good thing.

Here's the fried corn grits I grew up on at my mother's table. There is no recipe exactly because this usually came as a leftover from her use of grits for something else.  I used my leftovers from the Paula Deen Shrimp and Grits dinner.

First, simply refrigerate leftovers in a flat container of any shape that will make the grits easy to slice for the next meal.

   

Turn out onto a cutting board:   

Slice into about 1/2" thick pieces:

Saute in a few tablespoons of olive oil until lightly browned.  If serving for breakfast we always chose to dress them simply with real maple syrup. Or, finish topped with roasted veggies or anything you choose.  Or, simply by themselves as a side course.

Comments

[Rosie]

Oh yeah...I had the same revelation. I bit into my fried polenta and thought - "Those cheatin' hoes! This is mush! Italian, my foot!" Of course I found out that polenta really WAS peasant food from Italy. It would be interesting to find out what mush's pedigree is - did it come from Italian immigrants or is it just hard to keep a good thing from being discovered by another group of folks?

[sher]

To me, the thing that makes polenta great is the long cooking process that makes it creamier and creamier. And the butter and parmesan cheese they add certainly helps too. I love grits and polenta. Nice post.

[Glenna]

Rosie--I don't know about polenta but I remember reading somewhere about the history of grits. If I can find it, I'll let you know.

Sher--I agree. They are very similar but they are also different and polenta is finer and more creamy. Just another texture to play with!

[Glenna]

Rosie,
I couldn't help myself. I was too curious about the origins of corn meal mush too. Don't know about the Europeans but apparantly cornmeal, along with most of the things we take for granted as "southern" food were brought over from Africa. Wild, huh? I got this quote from www.slaveryinamerica.org

>>

[Glenna]

Dang it! It wouldn't quote it. What it said was that several foods were brought over from Africa on the slave ships that become integral components of southern cuisine. Some of the foods were: corn meal for mush and bread, okra, melons, sorghum, kidney and lima beans, black-eyed peas, etc.

[Michael]

Glenna, your source is right about the sorghum, okra and very possibly/probably the black-eyed peas, but not the corn or beans. Corn (any and all corn) is a native American grain and so are all the "kidney" type beans including limas. Along, of course with tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant and chiles.