Polenta & jamon chips: a tasty snack!

Today we bring you a different and original idea for a snack: fried polenta!
Polenta is a traditional dish of the italian gastonomy, overall the Northen part of the Country, like Lombardy. It's a dish made with flour, generally corn flour, that's made in a thousand different versions, even though the most popular might be the creamy one, to eat with a spoon like a first course. Today we bring you a funnier version of it: fried polenta! That's a way to keep eating polenta, generally eaten only in winter months, also in summer days, as a starter, as a snack, an antipasto...and of course while watching Soccer (or football, call it as you want!) World Cup of Brazil 2014!

And to give it a spanish touch to it, which is what define us (mixing our two countries' traditional cuisines) we can make the polenta chips with some jamon serrano, or prosciutto ham too if you prefer! We hope you like it!

Ingredients: 

• 450 g. of yellow polenta
• 1,5 l.of water (I used veggie stock)
• salt
• 100 g. of jamón serrano or prosciutto (in pieces)
• 100 g.of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (be careful: only the original works!)
• black pepper
• oregano
• 1 spoonful of olive oil
• olive oil or sunflower oil to fry

Preparation: 

1- Start with the polenta, and to do so put some water in a pot, heat it and let it boil. I used veggie stock to let my polenta be tastier, but you can use also water, or even milk. When the water starts boiling, add the salt and a spoonful of olive oil, and add the polenta little by little, rain-like. Stir it continuously with a wooden spoon.

Stir it alway in the same verse, in order to let the polenta be cooked uniformly, for about 40 minutes. The longer you stir your polenta, the better it will results, but in this case we're gonna fry it after that, so we do not need it to be overcooked.

Of course, we can use express polenta too, or a precooked one, which will make this step a lot
faster: in 10 minutes you'll have it ready!

2- When the polenta is almost done (if you see it becoming thickier, just add some more water), we're gonna add somegrated cheese, the pieces of prosciutto or jamon, the black pepper and the oregano to taste. Stir it well to have an homogeneous mix and remove it from heat.

3- Pour the polenta in a tray and flat it until you've made it some 2 cm thin. Let it cool completely, you can prepare it from a day to another and put it into the fridge, or just let it cool a little bit and then pop it into the freezer, so to have it ready in a matter of just some minutes.

4- Once that your polenta is cool, cut it as you want. For instance you can cut them chips-like (like french fries, or, to better say, belgian fries, since they're from Belgium!), or even in triangles.

5- Fry them in a boiling oil until we see them becoming golden brown and crunchy (do not fry them too much or they will eventually broke). When you take them out of the boiling oil, let them dry a bit over kitchen paper to avoid the excess of oil and...there you have them! You can eat them with your favourite sauce, as a side dish or just like a snack! Nom nom!

- Another option, more healthy since it avoid the frying part, is to roast them in a pan with just a drizzle of oil. Turn the slices upside down until you see them  golden brown in each side and...enjoy them! They will not result as crunchy as the ones you'll fry, but they'll be just as tasty as these!

Roast polenta

You can freeze the polenta slices that you don't eat, when you need them, just take them out, freeze them and eat them all!

AnGie