Pressure cooked polenta

I love polenta, the fact is it’s a pain in the ass to cook, it’s not hard or complicated, but standing there stirring a pot of something that ultimately wants to spurt and bubble and cover you in all sorts of pain just doesn’t do it for me. Heck even the 6 minutes of bubbling hell that “instant” polenta takes is about 5 minutes too long for my liking. It may seem like a strange attitude for someone who seems to spend an inordinate amount of time fussing about in the kitchen, but life is too short to suffer third degree burns for a bowl of creamy polenta. I guess you could say that it is fortunate that I now have a method that no longer involves any camping out stove side and the most hard work is sieve pushing or mouli turning, if that, you do need a pressure cooker though.

1 part (by weight) polenta (not instant).
5 parts liquid
Butter, cheese, oil, or anything else you want to enrich with.


Place about an inch of water in the bottom of the pressure cooker and place in a trivet. Mix together the polenta, liquid and fat in a bowl and then place the bowl into the pressure cooker. Cook on high pressure for 30 minutes, let the pressure drop naturally. I like to pass the cooked polenta through a sieve to ensure a smooth consistency. Once passed, you can fold in more butter or cheese to really enrich it, or if for example you’re serving it with a roast, I'd add some of the cooking fat/liquid. Taste and season with salt.

Polenta Cavatelli

There has definitely been an abundance of pasta, particularly cavatelli, recipes appearing on this blog lately, I am a little obsessed. Maybe it’s how easy fresh pasta is to throw together, or that you can customise, tweak and adjust it to your hearts content, probably a little bit of both. I have had polenta pasta on my mind for a while and have been trying to think it through before delving in head first and possibly wasting perfectly good product. After having some success with masa cavatelli it seemed like the perfect vehicle for polenta, I still had a couple of issues to resolve, polenta takes a while to cook through and what was going to bind the dough together, I didn’t want to rely on wheat flour for structure as I did with the masa. I settled on the idea of precooking the majority of the polenta, letting it set and then making a purée out of it, that would be the base of my dough, uncooked polenta and fine semolina were used to bring the purée together as a dough, I think if I used 100% polenta the cavatelli would be a wee bit dense.


I think I’ve mentioned it before but making too much cavatelli is never a problem, it freezes extremely well and can be cooked from the frozen, just allow a couple more minutes cooking time. The quantities below should be enough for four portions, so any unused raw cavatelli can be arranged on a sheet pan and placed in the freezer until solid and then transferred to a zip-lock bag for more permanent storage.


Polenta Purée
1 part polenta (50g)
5 parts water (250g)

• Place a rack or trivet on the bottom of a pressure cooker.
• Pour in an inch of water.
• Pour the ingredients into a heatproof bowl that will fit in the cooker.
• Cook on high pressure for 30 minutes.
• Allow the pressure to drop naturally.
• Remove the cooked polenta and when cool transfer to the fridge. Best left overnight.
• Purée the cooled cooked polenta, I used a fine mouli but a food processor is probably easier, I just don’t own one.

Polenta Cavatelli
2 parts polenta purée (250g)
1 part polenta (125g)
1 part fine semolina (125g)
2% salt (10g)

• Mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl.
• Knead to form a ball of dough, add a splash of water if you need to.
• Wrap tightly in cling-film and rest in the fridge for an hour.
• Divide the dough into four.
• Take one portion and cover the remainder.
• Using your hands, roll out into a thin log, about a pencil width thick.
• Cut into 1cm segments.
• Hold the gnocchi board at an angle and place a segment on the top edge. Use the heel of your thumb push down on the dough and towards the bottom edge of the board, the dough should curl up and fall of the board.
• Arrange competed cavatelli on a sheet pan dusted with semolina.
• Repeat with remaining dough.

Cooking

• Bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil.
• Place the pasta in the water, don’t overcrowd the pot.
• Cook for 4–5 minutes, they’ll float to the top when cooked.
• Scoop the cooked cavatelli out with a sieve or similar scooping device.

Sauce (for 2 portions)
Large knob of butter
2 large garlic cloves, crushed to a paste
2 tomatoes, skinned, de-seeded and finely diced
1 Lemon, juice and zest
Parsley, finely chopped
2-3 handfuls of rocket (arugula)

• Before the pasta goes in the water get a sauté pan on a medium heat.
• Melt the butter gently in the pan, add the garlic just as the pasta is going in the water.
• Gently sauté the garlic, you don’t want any colour, just cook out the rawness.
• Add the tomatoes and cook until they start to break down.
• Add a tablespoon or two of the pasta water, swirling and stirring through. The starch in the water will help emulsify the sauce and keep it from splitting. Keep adding water and cooking down until you have a nice thick sauce, probably about a third of a cup in total.
• Just before the pasta is cooked, taste the sauce, add half the lemon juice and zest, adjust the seasoning with salt. Taste and decide if you need the rest of the lemon juice, you may not.
• Scoop the cavatelli into the sauté pan and toss through the sauce, add the parsley and rocket, toss through and cook for 30–60 seconds more, just enough to wilt the rocket.

Serve with some good sharp hard cheese grated generously over top.

Braised Beef Cheeks

Slow cooked meat is awesome, melt in the mouth, big rich flavours, it’s all good, apart from the time it takes to get the result, you can cheat it with a pressure cooker, well the texture kind of, but you can’t cheat the rich strong flavour that a three hour braise produces, which is a problem when it’s a Wednesday night at 6pm and you have beef cheeks you really want to eat, but like hell you’re going to wait til what will probably be a 10pm dinner time. So like the crazy food weirdo that I am, I think hey I can cook two meals tonight, I don’t need to be sociable, I’ll just set up shop in the kitchen for the night. With one dinner made, and ate, I set about getting a beef cheek braise on the go, I figure if I get it in the oven by 8pm and cook it for 3 hours at 140ºC, I should be able to get it cool enough and get it in the fridge overnight to be finished off the next day.

2 Beef cheeks
2 Carrots, diced
1 Onion, diced
2 Celery stalks, diced
1 tsp Smoked sweet paprika
1 tsp Hot paprika
1 tsp Mustard
1 tbsp of Garlic confit
1 tbsp Tomato paste
250 ml Red wine
50 ml Tawny port
2 Bay leaves
1 Bunch of thyme

Preheat the oven to 140ºC

Brown the cheeks in a little olive oil, remove and place in a casserole dish (or dutch oven, I would have used one, but the enamel on mine exploded off with some gusto a while back and I haven’t replace it yet).

Sweat the onion, carrots and celery in the pan.

Add the paprikas, mustard, tomato paste, and garlic, cook until fragrant.

Deglaze with the port, and when almost evaporated add the red wine, bay leaves and thyme, simmer for a couple of minutes.

Pour the mixture over the cheeks and place on a lid, or cover tightly with a double layer of tinfoil. Cook for 3–4 hours.

When done, carefully remove the cheeks to warm bowl, and strain the liquid into the same, the vegetables have done their work, and will be pretty bland, so just discard them.

While the meat rests in its sauce, prepare the polenta. I unashamedly use instant polenta, good for you if you have the time and patience to put up with making the regular kind, and for putting up with the burns you get from popping bubbles of steamy polenta hell. Bring 500ml Chicken stock to the boil, remove from the heat and whisk in 125 grams of instant polenta, keep whisking until thick, you may have to put it back on the heat for a couple of seconds, but usually it isn’t needed. Add half a tub of crème fraîche and whisk in until fully incorporated.

Spoon a pillow of polenta onto a plate, take a cheek and slice it in three, then rest it on the polenta, spoon over a generous amount of sauce, and finish with a grating of a nice nutty cheese and a sprinkling of herbs.

Pork Cheek

We picked up some rare breed pork cheeks at the Masterton market, I decided to slow braise the meat and serve with some polenta. The cheeks have a beautiful layer of tasty fat and I thought the slow cooking would enhance its flavour.


I first prepared the pan for braising, I lined the bottom of the pan with tin-foil so I could seal it better later. Diced carrots, sliced onion, paprika (smoked), bay leaf, garlic, coriander and fennel seeds made up a bed for the cheek.


The meat got heavily browned on both sides and seasoned with salt and pepper. I then deglazed the pan with some chicken stock. The cheek was then placed on the bed of vegetables and the stock carefully poured around it.


Sealed up nice and tight, cooked for about 3-4 hours at 130°C. When cooked, the meat was placed in a bowl and the cooking liquid strained over it and it was left to rest (Don't discard the vegetables).

While the meat was resting I got the polenta on the go (I use 8 parts liquid, 1 part instant polenta and 1 part semolina flour). A mix of milk, water and butter made up the liquid part, when the liquid starts to boil remove it from the heat and while whisking sprinkle in the dry mix. Place the pot back on a very low heat and stir constantly until a thick porridge consistency is achieved.

Retrieve the pork from the liquid and cut in to generous slices. Spoon some polenta in to a bowl and top with the vegetables, pork slices and spoon over some of the cooking liquid.

Polenta and caramelised onion

A perfect lunch for an overcast, windy, cold day with showers of hail.


Slice the onions thinly. I like to use a mixture of onion and shallot.


Put a little oil in the pan, and put on a medium-low heat.

A couple of tips when it comes to caramelising onions

1. Don't constantly stir them, let them sit, movement will slow the process down.
2. Don't salt your onions, salt inhibits the Maillard reaction (browning).
   
3. Low and slow. It takes longer but is the only way to caramelise onions.

Cook for about 15 minutes on a low heat stirring occasionally. When it looks like they're 3-4 minutes away from being done chuck a teaspoon or so of fennel seed.


Deglaze the pan with some vinegar, and a dash of dijon mustard, and season.


Take your favourite polenta, and cook to their instructions.


I used 125 grams of polenta with 625mls of water. Cook until done, stir through some pesto and butter.


Serve warm with a drizzle of olive oil.

Semolina...

It's crazy how supermarkets bury away the cheaper options on their shelves. This weeks shop we were hunting for some polenta (we have a preferred brand) but could only find $6+ packets of the stuff, after a hunt managed to find our favorite brand in the "international" section (which is usually more expensive) for only $3. Also the same for fine semolina, 500g packs were all above the $6 mark, which is crazy expensive, but then when checking out the Instant Pudding section found a pack for $3.

Well the polenta and semolina got put to good use last night, Polenta with grilled sausages and ratatouille. Semolina apart from being able to make tasty pudding from it, and creating a great crust on breads/pizza, loosens polenta so it doesn't set into the firm brick it usually does.

Semolina/Polenta
125g each of Fine Semolina & Instant Polenta
2 Litres of Water/Stock (+salt if just water)
Big knob of butter

Bring the water with the butter to a boil and then scatter in the mixed polenta/semolina while whisking so no lumps form. Stir on the heat until the desired consistency is reached. Take off the heat and serve as is, or stir in some cheese (last night stirred in a good portion of ricotta which enhanced the creamy texture).

Ratatouille
Well probably not the traditional recipe but was tasty. Browned off some onions, shallots & garlic in a pan then added cubed eggplant, sliced carrots & diced capsicum with a good bunch of sage, thyme & bay leaves. Seasoned and then added a can and half of good quality tomato.

Either leave it to simmer on a stove or chuck it in the oven for about 45 min (although I think you could probably leave it longer).