Lovely Polenta

Several months ago, I made corn muffins that tasted like cardboard.  My old roommate Lara commented, “Ashley I had those corn muffins you made and… what did you do to them? They tasted horrible!”

At the time, I had just bought Michael Ruhlman’s book Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking (a.k.a the anti-recipe book).   I always hated recipes because I can never follow them so I thought I’d do his method.   His theory makes sense.  If you know the ratio for muffins, than you can make any kind you want because the ratio doesn’t change.  However, if you’re me, and you think you know the ratio but don’t actually know it, then you end up with cardboard corn muffins.  The trial and error method is a no no!

The cornmeal from those dreadful corn muffins is still in my cabinet and I decided to make a simple polenta using a Gourmet recipe, of course.  I noticed that I hadn’t made many sides and an easy polenta was just the thing to do.

This recipe is called Creamy Polenta:

Consists of:

“Bring water and salt to a boil in a 3-quart heavy saucepan, then add polenta in a thin stream, whisking. Cook over moderate heat, whisking, 2 minutes. Reduce heat to low and cover pan, then cook at a bare simmer, stirring with a long-handled spoon for 1 minute after every 10 minutes of cooking, 45 minutes total. Remove from heat and whisk in butter until incorporated.

Serve polenta warm.”