Rewind time two years and some change ago and I’m sitting in a small cafe just across from La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain. The cafe is actually an Italian cafe but it looked and felt like the right choice. So, I choose the polenta dish with sautéed mushrooms and a glass of red wine to enjoy it with. Granted, this is a heavier, more boozy lunch than I would typically eat but I was so hungry after a long morning of walking around and touring Barcelona. Travel tip: do not try to visit Park Güell and La Sagrada Familia in one morning/afternoon. You will not have enough time and be quite a bit stressed running through the streets of Barcelona getting poor directions with your sub-par Spanglish. Not going to lie though, getting directions from the most attractive of Spanish men doesn’t hurt the process.
I digress, so I’m starving and I get my meal and wine and it was the most heavenly meal I think I had ever enjoyed up until that point. There is a correlation between being completely starving and the enjoyment of the food you are eating, nonetheless, it was a stellar meal to say the least. The following recipe for polenta is nothing like the version I had that day but it was however the first time I had polenta (which is essentially “grits” in the American South) that I considered to be a gourmet meal, something to write home about. As a result, I love polenta now and I think of that memorable meal, staring at the awe-inspiring Sagrada Familia from across the way every time I eat it. That is the romantic story of how I came to love polenta.
Fast forward to “now-ish” and I am in South Africa and living with two other women in one flat. Naturally, I cook for them and occasionally, if I’m in an exceptionally good mood, I take requests. My roommate and good friend asks me to make polenta and I oblige. I made the polenta “creamy” the first time I made it for them, as I had it in Spain. Then I pressed the leftovers into a pan and fried them the next night and had crispy polenta squares. It was good but I needed to improve the texture of them on the outside a bit as they were tending to get stuck to the pan and not get an even golden-crisp on the outside I had envisioned. So, the recipe needed work but I left it alone for a while. Then, I get an awesome gig cooking for a pop-up dinner service called “Green & Vegan”, here in Cape Town. I decided on a latin-flavors inspired menu and wanted to make Arepas as a starter. Well, as it turns out they do not actually sell the correct maize flour needed to properly make Arepas. They do however sell….polenta! And that is when I thanked my lucky stars I had already been working to fix this crispy polenta cake recipe.
After a couple tests and my roommates and I consuming ample amounts of polenta, I got it just right. That sounds dramatic but it needed to be somewhat perfected before I served them at the event so, I put in the hard work of eating loads of delicious “un-perfected” polenta. Someones’ got to do it! That all being said I have had a few polenta posts up on my Instagram lately and now you know why. For the event I served the polenta cakes with an avocado-lime cream sauce on the bottom of the plate and a simple pico de gallo on top. I don’t have a recipe for these yet because they are so simple and straight forward. For the avocado cream, I simply blend it in a high speed blender with lime juice, water, a clove of garlic and salt. Then I thin it out a bit more if it needs it. Pico de gallo, is straight up chopped tomatoes, cilantro, red onion, salt and lime juice.
Other serving suggestions:
-Sauteed greens, mushrooms and/or onions. Stack the cakes on top and serve with cashew cream on top.
-Marinara sauce. Simple and delicious. Stack the cakes on top a ladle of marinara or spoon the sauce on top.
-Any ragu, like a lentil ragu, does fantastic with these.
-Simply served with a generous spoonful of pesto on top 🙂
Comment if you have questions about these!