Primo! Polenta (With Lotsa Options)

Gourmet Gayle has always emphasized that when it comes to food presentation, color is paramount. If you plate something green with something red and something yellow, you have achieved that delightfully dynamic culinary combination that typifies mediterranean cuisine.

Polenta provides a sunny yellow foundation for a variety of sauces. Here are two ways to prepare this creamy dish. Gayle and I prefer traditional cornmeal over "polenta" style cornmeal (simply means it has been ground finer). Gayle recently experimented with doing it in the crockpot and reports that it comes out perfectly, requires less of that naughty butter and cream and is more hands-off! Woo hoo!

Gayle is sharing her go-to fresh sauces with us also or you can use your favorite ready-made sauce. If you've got 'em, fresh basil leaves add a lovely touch of "green" for your platescape!

Basic Polenta
(Serves 3-4)

Bring 4 cups of water to a boil with ½ tsp. salt. SLOWLY whisk in 1 cup of corn meal. Turn heat down low enough that the polenta doesn’t pop.

Keep stirring and cook for about 10-15 minutes. You can do other things, just keep passing by and stirring. Polenta will become thick like Cream of Wheat.

Add 2 T butter, ¼ c Parmesan and 2 T cream (you can substitute sour cream or plain yogurt for the cream).

Serve warm with fresh Tomato and Basil Sauce or Porcini Mushroom Sauce.

Crockpot Method

4 cups boiling water

1 tsp salt
2 tsp butter
1 cup corn meal

Put everything in the crockpot and stir. Place lid on top and cook on high for 5 hours. Turn to low and cook as long as you want. Stir it occasionally as you walk by and think how yummy it will be. Add 1/4 parmesan before serving, if you like.

Fresh Tomato and Basil Sauce

2 or 3 T olive oil
2 large garlic cloves, minced
3 medium ripe tomatoes, cut up
¼ cup white wine
1/4 cup chicken broth
Optional: 2 T capers and/or 2 T pine nuts (add after tomatoes and wine have been cooked)
Lots of fresh black pepper
Salt to taste
2/3 cup torn basil leaves
grated parmesan cheese

Heat olive oil. Sauté the tomatoes and garlic in the oil for no more than 2 minutes. Add the wine, chicken broth, capers (optional), pine nuts (optional) and pepper and cook for another minute. Season with S & P to taste. Add the basil leaves just before serving and serve with cheese on top and a few decorative basil leaves.

Porcini Mushroom Sauce

½ cup dry porcini mushrooms

3T olive oil

1/8 of an onion, chopped (it’s about ½ cup)

6 cups sliced white mushrooms (or crimini or whatever you want)
1 clove garlic, minced
2T flour
Salt
Cream

 Soak ½ cup of porcinis in ½ C boiling water. Let them soak at least 30 minutes or longer (shorter if you are desperate).

Meanwhile sauté the onion just until it starts to get brown. Add the regular mushrooms and sauté a few minutes (keep turning them). Then add the garlic. The liquid should start coming out of the mushrooms by then.

Add ¼ tsp. salt and 2-tsp. flour. Add porcinis and their liquid and let cook 3 or 4 minutes. Add 3 or 4 T cream.

Cook on low for no more than 3 minutes. Serve over pasta or polenta.

As an Appetizer or a hot day meal:

Add sun-dried tomatoes, black olives, chopped green onions, red peppers, grated Parmesan cheese, fresh basil and/or oregano.
Line a spring form pan with plastic wrap and spoon polenta into pan. Refrigerate.

To serve: Flip onto a plate. Pull plastic wrap off and slice into wedges. Warm it, grill it or serve it at room temperature.

Introducing: Gourmet Gayle and the Breakfast Calzone

It's high time you met Gayle Tosello.

I have dubbed her Gourmet Gayle and she is a superhero in our family. She doesn't have a cape but she has a jar of capers...and she knows how to use them.

She doesn't have a time machine but she can whip up a wholesome and tantalizing dish faster than you can say "Buon Apetito!" Vivaciously she bounces from kitchen to dining room to sewing room, then out for a 5 mile walk, a swim or round of golf. Or all of the above.

Gourmet Gayle is living proof of the energy payoff of a mostly Mediterranean diet. In fact I'm convinced there is nothing she can't do. Except sit down.

Lucky me to have this polenta-making, biscotti-baking resource as mother-in-law and friend. I'm so excited to be able to share some of her fast and fabulous recipes with you here at the High Desert Home Companion. If I could bottle some of her enthusiasm I would share that also!

Gourmet Gayle prepares Breakfast Calzones with her granddaughter.

Gayle makes bread/pizza dough throughout the week; I think for her it's like brushing her teeth or putting on lipstick. But if that's too much fuss, which it is for me sometimes, use refrigerated pizza dough. This is a good candidate for "Breakfast For Dinner" nights. It is so simple but will impress your family (let them think you slaved):

Breakfast Calzones

Cook scrambled eggs (1-2 per serving).

Saute some veggies in olive oil: onion, mushrooms, zucchini, asparagus, tomatoes, spinach...whatever is in season or needs to be used up. Season with salt and pepper.

On floured board, roll out the dough into circles (about 6").
Layer eggs, veggies and top with cheese (Trader Joe's 4 Cheeses is great).

Fold over, pinch edges together and brush with egg. Then bake about 25 minutes at 400.