I Ain’t Stirrin’

After spending a couple of days testing high-quality shortcut polenta recipes several years ago, I’d come to the forlorn conclusion that there was no such thing. If you wanted to get deep corn flavor and perfect texture, you had to do it the old-fashioned way, which means standing and stirring for the better part of an hour.

Then Paula Wolfert called.

Wolfert, the queen of Mediterranean cookery, had been testing recipes for an upcoming book and she’d run across a new no-fuss technique for making polenta. It wasn’t fast, but it was easy--no standing over the stove. She wanted me to try it.

I was a little reluctant. My last experiments had been pretty disappointing. I’d tried cooking polenta in a double-boiler and I’d tried cooking polenta in a covered pan. I’d tried cooking polenta from different kinds of cornmeal. I’d tried sifting polenta through my fingers and shaking it from a cup. I’d tried starting it in a cold-water slurry. I’d even tried cooking quick polenta with quick (instant) polenta.

No matter what I did, nothing came close in flavor or texture to polenta made using the old-fashioned method of slowly adding dry cornmeal to boiling water, then standing and stirring until it forms a dry porridge that clumps together and pulls clean from the sides of the pan. Even cutting the cooking time from 45 to 30 minutes made a difference in flavor--for the worse.

I figured it was the direct contact between mush and heat that made polenta good. The germ of cornmeal is sensitive to heat, and the “toasting” that comes with this direct contact is what provides the deeper flavor.

As a result, I think I’ve made polenta exactly four times in the last three years. As delicious as it is, it’s just too much trouble.

But Wolfert was excited about this new method, which she found in Michele Anna Jordan’s “Polenta” (Broadway Books, 1997). In this recipe, you combine polenta, cold water, butter and salt and stick it in a 350-degree oven. After 40 minutes, you remove the pan from the oven, give it a good stir and stick it back in for 10 minutes. Then you remove it and let it rest for five minutes before serving.

In case you weren’t counting, there was exactly one stir in the entire process. No sifting of polenta, no smashing of lumps, no slurry, no whisking, no fuss.

This sounded too good to be true, but just on the off chance that it wasn’t, I ran right home to try it. I couldn’t believe the results. The flavor was deep and corny, the texture was perfectly smooth. The real deal.

Eureka.

I e-mailed Wolfert my congratulations, and she called back almost immediately. As an inveterate recipe detective, she was on the trail of something good. In fact, she reported, she’d found an even earlier example of the technique. It had been printed on the back of every bag of Golden Pheasant cornmeal for the last 20 years. She called back a little later to say that she had gotten through to the owner, Ed Fleming, and that he had said the recipe came from a friend’s mother. “He’s a real paisan,” he said.

But the source did not interest me nearly as much as how it worked. Frankly, I’m still confused, especially after a couple of further experiments.

In my view, the only shortcoming to Jordan’s recipe is one of quantity. She says it will serve four to six. Maybe as an appetizer. In the portions I prefer, I think it’s more like three or four.

So I tried doubling the recipe to feed more people. After 40 minutes, all I had was water with a cornmeal sludge on the bottom. I stirred it anyway and returned it to the oven for 15 minutes. Then another 15, then another 15. Finally, after about 1 1/2 hours, the polenta came together.

*

My best guess is that doubling the amount of water increased the amount of time necessary for it to come to an effective temperature. The good news is that the flavor and texture were still perfect at the end and that all of that stirring was unnecessary. When I tried it again, I stirred it only once and everything was fine.

To speed things up, Test Kitchen Director Donna Deane suggested bringing the ingredients to a boil on top of the stove before sticking them in the oven. It worked. But oddly, even after cooking to a very stiff texture (about 45 minutes), the flavor still hadn’t deepened the way the other batch did.

This I’m still trying to puzzle out. But at least while I’m thinking, I’m eating a lot of polenta.

RAGU WITH SOFT POLENTA

This polenta is so good it could be served by itself, with only a little butter and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano beaten in at the last minute, maybe. But I find polenta is a wonderful sponge to serve under juicy stews, or ragus, like this one I came up with using spareribs. If you’re feeding a crowd, add whole sausages for the last 20 minutes of cooking. This makes a lot of sauce, so you’ll probably have some left over--serve it the next day with some lightly buttered boiled noodles.

RAGU

2 tablespoons olive oil

6 meaty pork spareribs (sometimes called country-style)

Salt, pepper

3 Italian sausages

2 onions, diced

2 carrots, diced

1 stalk celery, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 teaspoons minced rosemary

1 cup dry red wine

1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes

1/4 cup tomato paste

SOFT POLENTA

2 quarts water

2 teaspoons salt

2 cups coarse-ground cornmeal

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons minced parsley

RAGU

Heat olive oil in bottom of Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Season spareribs with salt and pepper to taste. When oil is hot, almost smoking, add spareribs to pot and brown quickly on all sides, about 15 minutes.

Leave spareribs in pan and crumble sausages over top. Reduce heat to medium, stir and cook until sausage is no longer raw, about 5 minutes.

Add onions, carrots and celery to pan and cook, stirring, until lightly brown, about 5 more minutes. Add garlic and rosemary and cook until fragrant, 2 to 3 minutes. Pour wine over top, increase heat to high and cook until wine reduces, about 5 minutes. Add tomatoes and tomato paste. Stir to combine well, cover and bake at 300 degrees until pork is fork-tender, about 2 hours.

SOFT POLENTA

Combine water, salt, cornmeal and butter in 3- to 4-quart oven-proof saucepan. Bake at 350 degrees 1 hour 20 minutes. Stir polenta and bake 10 more minutes. Remove from oven and set aside 5 minutes to rest before serving.

To serve, spoon polenta into each of 6 warmed shallow pasta bowls. Place 1 rib on each and spoon ragu over top. Garnish with parsley. Serve immediately.

6 servings. Each serving:

623 calories; 1,327 mg sodium; 82 mg cholesterol; 35 grams fat; 50 grams carbohydrates; 21 grams protein; 1.58 grams fiber;