Brunch: Crisped polenta with sweet onions and ham

Today, I bring you a delicious brunch item, sure to be much better than yet another ham or turkey sandwich after Christmas. It’s modeled after this recipe from the Food 52 cookbook (which annoys me because it doesn’t have a good index), but altered to use leftover holiday ham and various ingredients I had in the kitchen at the time.

Fair warning: The polenta/cornmeal mush has to refrigerate for a couple of hours before frying, so if you’re hungry right now, I suggest you go with a turkey sandwich or ham and cheese (preferably with caramelized onions) omelet. If you’ve got time, have a snack and carry on!

Crisped Polenta with Sweet Onions and Ham

½ c cornmeal*

½ c cold water (for mixing)

1 ½ c water (for boiling)

½ tsp salt       

½ tsp garlic

½ tsp parsley

dash cayenne pepper

dash black pepper

flour (for dredging)

olive oil (for frying)

½ of a sweet onion, such as red onion or Vidalia

slices of ham (yay, leftovers!)

real maple syrup, to serve

Boil 1 ½ c water and salt in medium saucepan. In a small bowl, mix cornmeal, spices, and ½ c cold water. Gradually stir in cornmeal mixture. Cook for five minutes, stirring constantly. Reduce heat, cover, and cook for ten minutes, stirring occasionally. (Or cook the polenta according to package directions, if you’re cool enough to have some on hand.) Grease a mini loaf pan** and press cornmeal/polenta mixture into the pan. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for about two hours, or until firm enough to slice.***

Shortly before taking the polenta out of the fridge, thinly slice the onion and sauté in olive oil until browned and delicious.

When polenta is firm, remove from pan and carefully cut into ¼-inch slices. Heat oil in a nonstick pan, dredge polenta slices in flour, and fry until crisp and lightly browned. Lightly fry ham slices and arrange on plates with fried mush and sautéed onions. Drizzle with maple syrup.

Serve with a salad, if you like, perhaps some romaine or arugula with balsamic vinaigrette, goat cheese, and pine nuts.

Bonus: If your family doesn’t seem interested in eating polenta, you can eat the leftovers with an onion and feta omelet for breakfast the next day.

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*I’ve never actually had polenta, but as far as I can tell it’s just about the same thing. If you have real polenta, good for you; if not, cornmeal seems to work just fine. I have long suspected that “polenta” is mostly a marketing technique by cornmeal producers and/or the Iowan government. (Though, if you have real polenta, please let me know if it’s different from/better than cornmeal mush. I’ve been wondering.) I see their point; polenta sounds much more appetizing, so that’s what we’ll be referring to cornmeal mush as in this recipe.

**The goal here is to get the polenta into a something vaguely loaf shaped so you can slice it later. If you don’t have a mini loaf pan, a largish coffee mug or two would probably work.

***You can speed things up a bit if you only need a few slices by putting the polenta in the freezer for 15-20 minutes and slicing off the ends to fry. Then put it back in the fridge; I have no idea what happens when this stuff freezes.

To start: Fried chickpeas

This holiday season, I’m going to try something new: Recipe blogging! I can’t promise to post regularly or dazzle you with my food photography, but maybe writing about food will be a good incentive to try more home cooking. So, without further ado, snacks:

I am almost always a fan of snacks. I found this recipe in a recent issue of Bon Appétit and decided to make them for a Thanksgiving appetizer. (In the end, I think I was the only one who ate them, but that’s probably just because all the rest of the food got done cooking at about the same time, and chickpeas got nothing on ham and fresh crescent rolls.)

Bon Appétit recommends using smoked paprika, but I didn’t have that (though, for some reason there are three cans of regular paprika in the house). It also calls for two cans of chickpeas, which seemed unwise given that my family sometimes takes a while to warm up to new foods. So, here’s my variation (adjust seasoning to taste):

Fried Chickpeas

1 tsp paprika

½ tsp cayenne pepper

¼ tsp lemon pepper

¼ tsp garlic powder

salt, to taste

olive oil, for frying*

1 can chickpeas (about 15 oz.)

Mix spices together and set aside. Drain and rinse chickpeas; dry well. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat; add about half of the chickpeas to the skillet and sauté them until lightly golden and crispy. Place in a bowl and sprinkle with about half of the spice mixture; mix and adjust spices as necessary.

They’re a little weird, especially if you don’t cook with much paprika (which my family doesn’t, despite having three cans of it in the house), but strangely addicting. About halfway through frying the second half of my chickpeas, though, I realized these would be great with a garlic-herb spice mixture, so I tossed the other half with this:

¼ tsp thyme

½ tsp garlic powder

½ tsp lemon pepper

salt

Cook as above and season to taste.

These are pretty good on their own, but they’d also make a great topping for a Greek salad. Try them over romaine lettuce with a lemon vinaigrette, topped with kalamata olives and feta. And, just a note, they’re not particularly good after sitting out for a while, so make them just before serving.

Bonus: This recipe probably also works for almonds, pine nuts, cashews, or snack mix, so if you like it, experiment with other ingredients and let me know how it turns out!

*I wasn’t paying attention to the recipe and used canola oil, but olive oil would be much better. Also, I didn’t really measure most of the spices, so use caution when adding large amounts of cayenne and/or garlic.

ATTENTION:

There is nothing here yet.