Not so corny after all: polenta offers menu appeal

Nation's Restaurant News, April 22, 1996 by Jack Hayes

Laura Maioglio reckons the American dining public finally is coming to terms with polenta. The second-generation proprietor of Barbetta Restaurant, which began serving polenta-garnished cuisine to Manhattan's theatergoers back in 1906, claims the "What is it?" questions are growing noticeably fewer.

"They used to grimace when I told them it was cornmeal," Maioglio recalls. "They probably couldn't help seeing it as some kind of cereal."

Nowadays, she says, validating a view held by chefs in many corners of the country, people not only understand polenta but also are ready to taste it in ways undreamed of just a few years ago.

Take, for example, Maioglio's polenta fonduta, a variation of the seasonal Northern Italian dish, in which she substitutes fried polenta squares for the dipping crackers or toast.

Or take chef-owner Ben Barker's herbed cornmeal gnocchi, served at Magnolia Grill in Durham, N.C., with roast chicken in Madeira jus -- a variation on Joachim Splichal's polenta gnocchi with rabbit and white wine jus, as described in "Patina Cookbook: Spuds, Truffles, and Wild Gnocchi" (Collins Publishers, 1995).

How about lasagna of grilled and soft polenta with Gorgonzola, roasted mushrooms and seasonal vegetables at b. Figueroa in Seattle? And in Philadelphia Sonoma restaurant serves polenta fries with homemade tomato ketchup and sour cream.

For that matter take the chocolate polenta cake that has become "an unbelievable seller as a menu special," according to manager Elizabeth Blau of Osteria del Circo, in Manhattan. Adapted from a recipe held by Egidiana Maccioni, matron of the family that operates Le Cirque, Circo's polenta cake came into being through the effort of the new restaurant's pastry chef, a Frenchman named Practice Caillot, who serves it with either sauce anglaise or espresso ice cream for a balance of moisture.

"It's basically a flourless cake with lots of texture -- and lots of chocolate and butter," says assistant pastry chef Nancy Stork, who hopes to give Caillot some dessert competition with a dish she calls "warm polenta pudding and strained fruits."

While it was the Italians who gave us the name polenta -- from po meaning "a little bit" and lenta for "slow" because the cooking normally takes at least an hour -- the earliest users of ground corn in a culinary manner were the Indians of the Americas.

Indeed, most who have studied the influence of New World food products on European cuisine are found of honoring polenta's American roots.

"Polenta has a romantic sound, but I feel we should call it by its correct name," maintains Jose Guiterrez, chef de cuisine at the restaurant Chez Philippe, in The Peabody Hotel, Memphis, Tenn.

"I wonder if the Indians knew that cornmeal would one day have so many uses," he adds.

Yet while polenta truly is ground corn, there are textural differences between what is served today in Northern Italy -- a generally "less gritty" product -- and the traditionally "heavier" American cornmeal.

"You no longer find the coarser textures [in Italy]," laments Maioglio, whose relatives for generations operated a town mill in the Piedmont region. "That old-fashioned rough polenta -- I'm always looking for it," she adds.

Guiterrez insists on using domestic rather than imported cornmeal in his polenta dishes, which include a creation he calls "Southern grain polenta," blending Arkansas rice, hominy and fresh corn with stone ground cornmeal and grits -- both medium and coarse. Cooked with garlic, cream sauce, Parmesan and mozzarella, his polenta becomes a bed for roast free-range chicken, caramelized using mustard and molasses.

"No matter what you do with it," Guiterrez explains, "corn is native American." Still, it is the remarkable versatility of cornmeal that makes it so popular with cooks in virtually every region today.

Brain McDonald, formerly banquet chef at the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island near Jacksonville, Fla., and now chef instructor at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College in western North Carolina, is taken by what he calls The "limitlessness" of polenta. "Texturally and colorwise, it's a many-sided starch," he says, noting that blue cornmeal becomes a dramatic substitute for the traditional white of creamed potatoes. "And there are no limits on how you can flavor it," McDonald adds.

One of the few starches that can be served cold and hard in a cracker or crouton form or semihard like bread as well as hot and creamy, polenta stores superbly in its dry and cooked state. It has the diversity of flour -- from thickener to dough -- and then some, chefs point out. Moreover, according to chefs, polenta is a low-cost starch.

"Maybe not as cheap as potatoes and rice, but it's economical, which counts in our business," McDonald says.

Magnolia Grill's Barker talks of the "malleability" and "integrity" of polenta -- its reluctance to "fall apart." In that vein Barker tosses deep-fried polenta squares in his signature panzanella, the Italian bread salad, with tomatoes, red wine vinaigrette and greens with no crumbling or loss of texture.