Bigly Polenta

Sit. Pour yourself a coffee. We're doing this right. Polenta is one of the most MISUNDERSTOOD foods on planet Earth. People hear 'polenta' and they think 'fancy.' They think 'restaurant.' They think 'sad little spoon of yellow stuff under an overpriced piece of fish.' Wrong. WRONG. Polenta is PEASANT FOOD. The greatest peasant food in human history. Italian farmers ate polenta for centuries — CENTURIES — and they were happy, they were strong, they were the toughest farmers in Europe, and it's because of the polenta. Many people don't know this. Many people don't know anything, frankly. We're working on it.

An old Italian woman cornered me once at a market in the Marche — a tiny woman, four feet of solid muscle and opinions, she had a wooden spoon in her purse, she WOULD use it — and she made me promise to do polenta exactly the way she did it. Coarse cornmeal. Heavy pot. Stir with feeling. NEVER, under any circumstances, use the pre-cooked tube of polenta that comes shrink-wrapped from the grocery store. A TUBE. Of polenta. Like a sausage. That is not polenta. That is what polenta becomes when it has given up on life. The neighbor who taught her this lived to be 102. Could be a coincidence. Probably not.

And yes, it takes 40 minutes of stirring. Forty. Minutes. I know what you're thinking — 'Bigly, that's a long time, I have things to do' — but here's a secret nobody tells you: you don't have to stir the WHOLE time. You stir, you walk away, you stir, you check your phone, you stir, you live your life. Polenta is forgiving. Polenta is patient. Polenta is the most TREMENDOUS grain product on Earth, and the finish — butter, parmesan, more parmesan, a little more parmesan, possibly some mascarpone, more parmesan — the finish is what separates the men from the boys. Hand on heart.

Polenta is the foundation. The CANVAS. You spoon it under a braised short rib, you crown it with mushrooms, you serve it next to sausage and peppers, you put a fried egg on top for breakfast — yes, breakfast, polenta for breakfast is a thing, the Italians have been doing it forever, the Americans are JUST catching on, sad — and every single one of those meals becomes the best meal somebody's ever had that week. Maybe that month. The polenta does the work. The polenta always does the work. And there you have it.