A New Kind of Polenta

This is yet another one of those culinary ideas that I kick myself for not figuring out on my own. It makes perfect sense. Polenta is made from milled corn, dried and packaged and sent to you to be reconstituted and simmered away on the stove. Why not capture the intense summer flavor of corn by grinding corn, straight off the cob, in a Cuisinart, at home to enjoy the sweet fresh flavor of corn in a whole new way. Somewhere between creamed corn and polenta, this turns out much sweeter than the polenta you're used to.

Serve it as a side dish to a hearty savory stew and the sweetness will perfectly balance the salty savory nature of your main course.

Sweet Corn Polenta
Adapted from Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi

6 ears of corn
2 1/4 cups water
3 T butter
Salt
Black pepper

Cut the corn from the cob and place in a saucepan with the water. Bring to a simmer and cook for 12 minutes. Drain the corn, reserving the cooking liquid. Transfer the corn to a Cuisinart and process for several minutes to break down the corn as mush as possible. Return the milled corn to the saucepan and add the cooking liquid. Cook over low heat for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring frequently, until thickened. Fold in the butter and season the polenta with salt and pepper to taste.

Canapé and Corn Cakes

The final two levels of classes at The French Culinary Institute take place in the kitchen of L'Ecole, FCI's restaurant. For someone like me who may never go on to work in a restaurant kitchen, it provides invaluable experience working the line and cooking food for paying customers. There is nothing quite like the feeling of finishing service on a Friday night, a busy one in particular, and knowing that all of your dishes went out on time and cooked perfectly (well almost perfectly?). It makes you feel like you can accomplish just about anything, at least, that's the way it made me feel.

In both level 5 and level 6, you move through the different stations of the restaurant, cooking the meat dishes for four nights, fish for four nights, pastry for four, and so on. When you get to level 6, you get to spend four nights at the canapé station where the amuse bouche that precedes each meal is prepared. In most restaurants the amuse bouche serves as a way to use up excess ingredients while giving customers a little more than they are paying for. At FCI, it is up to the team working the canapé station to come up with and prepare the amuse each night. It is one of the few opportunities we get to be creative and to not follow any FCI issued recipes. It's a fun station.

My team prepared the pictured canapé on a night when we were trying to use up some excess skirt steak. We braised the meat (not a usual treatment of skirt steak) and reduced the braising liquid to make a sauce to mix with the shredded meat. The base is a delicious corn cake recipe that my classmate Walter brought in for us to play with. I am providing the recipe for the corn cake below. The cakes would make a great side dish, or, if you have some leftover meat to use up, shred the meat, make mini corn cakes and impress your guests with your own amuse bouche before dinner. We topped the whole thing with a mango salsa - chopped mango, red onion and thai chili pepper. If the salsa gets too spicy, as it did in our case, you can temper it with some honey to tame the heat.

Corn cakes
Adapted from Delicious Magazine

60g plain flour
1 egg
1 t baking powder
Handful fresh coriander
300g sweetcorn kernels
1 red chili, deseeded and finely chopped
Vegetable oil for cooking

Place the flour in a food processor with the egg, baking powder, coriander and half the corn. Pulse until coarsely chopped. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and stir the chili and the remaining corn. Heat enough oil to just cover a large, non-stick frying pan and drop in teaspoonfuls of the corn mixture. Fry for 1 minute each side, until golden, then drain on paper towels while you cook the rest. Arrange the corn cakes on a platter and top with leftover meat or a simple salsa.

A Simple Salad for a Simple Summer Morning

It is only 73 degrees outside right now. I think that is the coolest it has been since I moved to New York. The boyfriend is in town for the weekend and I cannot wait to get outside and take advantage of the drop in temperature.

Tomorrow morning we head to Philadelphia for the day to visit the neighborhood where my boyfriend grew up, picnic in Valley Forge and if I’m lucky, eat a cheesesteak on South Street before heading back to New York.

Before I get started with all of that, I need to share this delicious summer salad with you. It is so simple. If you can use a knife to cut a tomato, you can make this salad. Because of its simplicity, it is vital that you find the juiciest, ripest, heirloom tomato you can get your hands on. I recommend hitting your local farmers market, even better if you have a plant or two going in your own backyard. If all you can get your hands on is a flavorless, bred-for-shelf-life grocery store tomato, don’t bother with this salad. Everything hinges on the flavor of the tomato.

If you haven’t had raw corn before, trust me, it is delicious. Cut straight from the cob into the salad, it tastes even juicer and sweeter than if you were to cook it for a few minutes on the stove or grill. Finish the cut vegetables with a few torn leaves of basil and a glug (technical term) or two of olive oil and you are finished. It is that simple. You do not need the recipe, but I will include one below just in case. Now get outside and enjoy the summer weather.

Simple Summer Salad

1 juicy tomato
1 ear of corn
6 – 8 leaves of basil
1 T good quality olive oil
1 t vinegar (your choice, I used balsamic)
Kosher salt to taste

Cut the tomato into thick slices and arrange on a plate. Sprinkle generously with kosher salt. Cut the corn from the cob and arrange around the tomato slices. Tear the basil leaves in half or quarters and add to the plate (smell your hands to enjoy the basil scent left behind). Drizzle the salad with a little olive oil and vinegar and share with someone you really like. This is summer on a plate.

Prosciutto Corn Cakes

I love corn. I love corn on the cob, cornbread, corn pudding and I certainly love a coarsely ground cornmeal, cooked for at least thirty minutes while liquid is slowly introduced, turning the whole mixture into what is known as polenta.



This love of corn is why I get excited anytime I see a recipe that resembles cornbread or calls for some kind of ground corn product. It’s why I turned my mother’s cornbread recipe into madeleines so I could snack on them at tea time, or anytime really. It’s also why these little corn cakes caught my eye in a recent Donna Hay Magazine.



They’re quite simple really. An instant polenta mixture is seasoned with sage and poured into waiting muffin tins lined with prosciutto. The most complicated part of this recipe was locating instant polenta. If you live in Southern California let me save you the trouble of going to the four grocery stores that I visited during my search (yes I said four and yes I am aware that I have possibly the most patient boyfriend a girl could ask for). Gelson’s in Marina del Rey carried the instant variety and I’m willing to bet that their other locations do to.



If you can’t find instant polenta, do not try to substitute regular polenta here as it will completely throw off the cooking times. If you don’t feel like putting in the effort to find the instant variety than try what I am going to do next time – whip up a batch of my mother’s cornbread and use it to fill the prosciutto-lined muffin tins. I can’t make any promises about the state of the prosciutto after a longer cooking time, but I love my mother’s recipe so much that I’m willing to give it a try.



Prosciutto Corn Cakes
Adapted from Donna Hay Magazine

1 cup of instant polenta
1/2 cup of flour
1 t baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
2 T of chopped sage + 12 sage leaves
Salt and pepper
1 1/2 cups sour cream
2 eggs, lightly beaten
12 slices of prosciutto

Preheat the oven to 350*
Place the polenta, flour, baking powder, baking soda, chopped sage, cream and eggs in a bowl and mix well to combine. Season with salt and pepper. Place extra sage in the bases of 12 lightly greased 1/2 cup capacity muffin tins. Line each tin with prosciutto and fill with polenta mixture. Bake for 15 - 20 minutes or until cooked. Let cool slightly before serving.