Polenta is one of the most famous dishes of Italian cuisine. Spread from North to South of the peninsula, each region has its own favorite recipe. There is nothing better than this dish on a cold and rainy winter day. His kindness and his preparation immediately bring to mind the image of a domestic hearth. Are you curious to know when this dish was born and how many different cooking methods there are? Let’s learn together.
The origin of this dish
According to popular belief, the polenta is a dish that dates back to the ancient Romans. The rest are the same Apicius in his recipe book indicated by his name button a plate with a base water and cereal semolina. In fact, the yellow polenta, the one we all know and eat, was just born four hundred years ago with the arrival of the first giantturco seeds fromAmerica in Val Camonica, where the first crops were recorded. During the following centuries this food became the main source of nutrition for the inhabitants of the Alps and Apennines.
Polenta – wineandfoodtour.it
According to tradition, it must be cooked in the fire of a fireplace or a stove, using a copper pot and a large turning tool. In fact each region or rather each region of Italy interprets it differently recipe.
How many different ways of cooking polenta are there?
The first clarification to be made is that it is not certain that this dish is prepared only and exclusively with gianturco, as was already the case in Roman times. In Sardinia, for example, they cook purenta or farru, from barley flour, beef stock and mint. In the Apennines, however, since the giant turkey was hard to come by in the past, chestnut flour polenta, delicious and nutritious, has become widespread.
There Tarragna polenta Instead it is widespread among its Alps Valtelina. It is made with butter and cheese and eaten with rabbit, poultry, sausage and mushrooms. However, little is known polenta groatscharacteristic of Val d’Arigna, made with buckwheat flour and yellow flour, cooked in cream with the addition of mountain cheese and mashed potatoes.
How to cook polenta – wineandfoodtour.it
In Lombardy this specialty is only cooked with use I craved yellow flour (the coarse grain). There is also a ‘pasticciata’ version, typical of Milan, cooked in the oven and which includes the addition of sausage, tomato and mushrooms. In Varese instead polenta eaten with beef strips (bruschetta)red wine and aromatic herbs, while in Como it is eaten with fish called misoltini. Even in Venice and Trieste polenta (from white corn though) goes well with fish. There is also a sepia version. There is also a version with polenta picula astride that is, with meat or rather horse stew and peppers in Umbria, while in Trentino there is carbonera polenta with bran. Finally, in Naples we eat its version flakesie fried as street food.