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When I first began my career as a cook in San Francisco, polenta wasn’t a common starch in non-Italian restaurants, as it is today. I remember talking with a Chef about an upcoming menu on which he was thinking of using polenta as the side dish. I asked him what exactly polenta was and he told me an Italian ground corn meal. I asked him if he was talking about “Polanda.” He said no, and that he had never heard of polanda. I told him it was also an Italian ground corn meal that I had eaten many times growing up. I remember calling my Mom and telling her we were going to serve something called polenta at the restaurant. I asked her if she had ever heard of this similar sounding dish. She laughed and said that they were the same things! She explained that “pol-an-da” was just our family’s mispronunciation of the actual name polenta. I was pretty embarrassed to say the least. Come to find out, my family had mispronounced and/or Americanized many Italian terms (mostly curse words), which I won’t go into now, but needless to say, from that point on, I’ve always checked! Enjoy!
Ingredients:
1/2 cup polenta
2 1/2 cups water
salt and pepper to taste
2 tsp butter
1 tsp olive oil
3 ears fresh corn (about 1 1/2 cups)