How to Make Polenta Triangles

How to Make Polenta Triangles All right, the first step for our Polenta Crispy Polenta Triangle is to cook about your Polenta. I’m using real Polenta. I just have to use cornmeal for this. Cornmeal is a little different Polenta, cornmeal is ground finer and I think it has more problems with lumps and it’s not as easy to work with. So, go online and try to find actual Polenta. I ordered online and it’s a very simple recipe. It’s 4 to 1, four parts water or stock or other kind of liquid to one part of Polenta. So, I have two cups of salted water. They’re brought to a simmer and I stirred in a half a cup of Polenta. So usually, I make four-cup water with one cup of Polenta but I’m just doing a half batch here for these triangles. Some people use stocks, some fuse part milk. You do what you want to do. I’m not really going to flavor this too much because they’re flavorful chicken and mushroom dish. So, I just wanted the salted water and the Polenta. I’m going to put in little cheese here in a second but let it cook for about 20 minutes and you got to give it a good stir once a while. You shouldn’t have any problems with lumps if you’re careful on you fist introduce it and your whisk it and when you sprinkled it in. And notice it cooks, so just give it a stir every once in a while with your wooden spoon and that cooks for about 20 minutes. Again, give it a taste of the -- if you can taste the grains of the cornmeal, if it’s still a little crunchy, let it cook longer. Once the heat was off, I stirred in a quarter cup of reggiano parmesan. Now, that of course is for flavor but the cheese will also going to help crisp this up when we go and sauté and you’ll see that in a couple of minutes. So, I’m going to take that still warm Polenta. See when the Polenta cools, it gets really hard, so you got to do this step when it’s warm. I’m going to spread that out in my pie dish. If you want to make squares, use a square dish. All right, now this will set in about 30 minutes, so let it cool down on room temperature, throw in the fridge and in about 30 minutes, it should be firmed up to work with and you can of course do this the day before. Now, I want to pat that down with a piece of plastic along the really smooth surface because if I had a rough surface, when I go and sauté it, it’s not going to look as good and it’s not going to brown evenly. So, try to get that as flat as I can. So, a couple of hours later, I took it out of the fridge. Again, 30 minutes is fine and then I’m going to take a knife and I’m just going to cut six triangles here. Now, I’m going to sauté at the pan. On the stove, I went ahead and I put in medium heat, little bit of olive oil. You don’t need a ton but you do need enough in order to crisp it up and this is not really going to absorb any oil, so don’t worry too much about the calories. So, make sure you get a good amount of oil in the pan and there we go. So, we got on about eighth of an inch oil in there and about five minutes on one side. It became nice and golden brown and crunchy and the inside stays really nice and soft and moist and the outside gets a nice crust on it. So, it’s a really nice contrast. I served it with my chicken with mushrooms. That also is on the site. Give that a try—is delicious, Crispy Polenta Triangles, even more so. Enjoy!