Traditional Polenta From the Ground Up

Several years ago, we started to see polenta on the menus of trendy restaurants here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and although some of us actually knew that it was a traditional Italian staple (often substituted for pasta or bread), many people seemed confused by this chameleon-like dish. Sometimes it was an appetizer, sometimes it was a main course, and sometimes it was even a dessert.

Back in the American heartland (where you’d think they knew just about everything there was to know about corn), nobody had ever heard of polenta. Now, of course, it’s become more common to see it offered as “non-gourmet” fare, which is what it was traditionally.

Polenta is basically coarsely ground cornmeal. But while in the United States we have traditionally used cornmeal in baking, in Italy they cook it for a very long time, spread it out, cool it, and top it with sauces, cheese, vegetables, powdered sugar or other delectable flavorings.

But let’s start at the beginning. By itself, corn is only moderately nutritious. A two-thirds cup serving of fresh kernels provides 11% of the recommended daily allowance, or RDA, for vitamin C and about a quarter of the folacin. Yellow corn contains about 6% of the RDA for vitamin A (in the form of beta carotene), but white corn has none. Corn is fairly high in protein, but low in the essential amino acids lysine and tryptophan.

But, as with most other vegetables and grain products, you can obtain a complete protein mix by combining corn with legumes or animal products.

One of the most interesting things about corn is that although it is quite high in the B vitamin niacin, it is in a form that the human body cannot use. When the Native Americans ground their corn to make cornmeal for flat breads, they always added an alkaline substance such as lime (the mineral, not the fruit). This released the niacin from the corn and made it available to the body.

For this reason, they were able to rely heavily on corn as a dietary staple. However, in populations that were not aware of this, the rate of pellagra (niacin deficiency) became epidemic. This was especially true in the Southern part of the United States during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

If you have ever noticed a bitter taste when you make something from cornmeal, it is because the polyunsaturated oil in corn becomes rancid quickly after the corn is ground. If you want your corn bread or polenta to be good and sweet, and you are not really set up to grind your own corn, buy the freshest cornmeal you can find and keep it airtight in the refrigerator.

Now that polenta has become more popular in the United States, it is available in many forms. Quick-cooking varieties are on the shelves, but normally, polenta is cooked slowly (about 30 minutes) with four cups of liquid to one cup of cornmeal. Ready-to-slice polenta is also available in the refrigerated section of the market, and recipes abound in cookbooks.

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Remember, we’re looking for questions from our readers. You can contact us by mail at Dale Ogar, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-7360, or by e-mail daogar@uclink4.berkeley.edu.