The Canary Islands' Almogrote cheese cream

The almogrote is a delicious cheese cream typical of the Canary Islands, and overall of the island of La Gomera. We'll see later on this post the recipe in detail, what we can anticipate you now is that the main ingredients for this canarian delice are mainly olive oil, garlic, mature cheese and pimentón, a spanish spice similar to paprika, all beaten in a mortar with a pestle.
This unbelievably tasty cheese cream (try it and you believe it!) has a very long history, that begun in the rich gastronomy of the spanish Jews, called the Sephardim (from the identification of Spain with the Biblical western country of Sepharad).

The Spanish Separdi Jews modified an ancient roman sauce called moretum (probably the granpa of the pesto sauce). The moretum (from the greek verb "moreon", to stir) was made mixing olive oil, cheese, garlic, vinegar, wine and aromatic herbs. Here comes the Sephardi touch: they reduced the quantity and the proportion of the ingredients, in order to obtain a delicious cream instead of a a liquid sauce. In the late stage of the Roman empire, the names were frequently modified and corrupted, and this happened to the moretum too, that, misspelled, became "modretum".

The Sephardi cream cheese continued being popular also during the Islamic domination of Spain. During this stage, the name of the dish was modified from modretum to al-modrote.

The Al Modrote was a popular Sephardi recipe until the XVII century: by that time, all jews of Spain were all converted to catholicism or expelled and their goods confiscate.

But, even if the decision of the Catholic Monarchs of getting rid of the jews in Spain was highly unethical, the Sephardi gastronomical tradition continued elsewhere, in the remote lands and islands of the Spanish Empire and also in other countries.

For example, one of Europe's most influential rationalist-pantheist philosopher, the Netherland-born Baruch Spinoza, was a Sephardi jew whose parents were expelled from Portugal.

But let's get back to the cuisine! We said that a large amount of Sephardim found their new house in the remote lands of the Spanish empire, and many of them choosed the flourishing harbours of the Canary Islands, on the Atlantic route to Americas. There they regained the fortunes the loosed in the mainland investing in the Atlantic commerce. During the Sixteenth Century, the Spanish Siglo de Oro, many Sephardim had their own Siglo de Oro in Canary Islands, after hard times in continental Spain. In the Atlantic archipelago, it's very likely that many of the Spanish Jews continued their gastronomical tradition. Here, the almodrote was matched with two gastronomical gems of the Canary Islands: the Queso de la Gomera, one of the very best Spanish cheeses still nowadays, and the incredible taste of the pepper of La Palma. 

In the island of La Gomera, the almodrote became the best version of itself, and its name was changed to almogrote, the ultimate cheesy cream. The almogrote, despite the fact of being less known than it would deserve to be, is still growing in popularity and gastronomical appreciation througout the World. We love this gourmet cream made of the best cheeses, we love the almogrote!
Here goes the recipe!


Recipe:

Ingredients: The quantities of the ingredients are orientatives, since it depends mainly on the kind of cheese you're using and the texture of the cheese cream you're looking for. Try and develop your own golden ratios! ;)

- 320 g. of hard mature cheese
- 200 ml. of olive oil
- 2 sweet peppers from La Palma (you can use also ñora or choricero peppers, or mexican Anchos red peppers)
- 2 garlic cloves
- Salt and pepper to taste (it depends also on the kind of cheese you're using, for many kinds of cheese are already savoury enough)
- Optional: hot pepper (like the mexican jalapeño, use it just if you like it veerrrrry spicy!). 

Pimienta Palmera

Preparación: 

1- Even if traditionally the almogrote was prepared in a mortar, nowadays you can do it in a mixer. First, grate the cheese, possibly a very mature and hard one (and if it's from La Gomera island is even better!).

2- Boil the peppers, so to hydrate them and then extract all the pepper pulp and put it into the stand mixer. Add to the mixer the rest of the ingredients, that are the garlic cloves and the grated cheese. Little by little, while beating, keep adding the olive oil, just as you would do to make a mayonnaise, until you reach the texture you prefer.

3- Very important! This is crucial K? Take a slice of a crunchy fresh bread and spread the almogrote above it and...nom nom! Keep the almogrote in a jar and pop it into the fridge, and if it dries up then add some olive oil to conserve it longer (even if -trust me- it won't last long he he he!)

I personally prefer a creamy texture, but still I want to notice little, irregular bites of hard cheese under my teeth, but that's of course a personal taste!

A fast version of the almogrote can be easily obtained with very good results, without grating the cheese. Put all the ingredients together in the mixer with the half of the olive oil, mix it all and at the end correct the texture by adding little by little more olive oil, the exact amount it depends on the kind of hard cheese we're using.

There are many versions of the recipe, someone uses mature tomatoes too, but to be honest this is not the most typical choice, Someone uses a spoonful of sweet (or spicy) pimentón to enforce the flavour. The pimentón is a good alternative though if you can't find peppers anyway.

It's soo easy and tasty you won't believe it!

Try it and you'll repeat it!

Apple and Sidra Risotto recipe

Today we bring you a delicious risotto recipe, with a different and delicate taste. We mixed it up making a sort of Italian-Spanish fusion, with italian rice and apples with the typical Spanish Sidra de Asturias.

The Apple is an extraordinary fruit whose origins are to be find in Central Asia in the Neolithic era. There are more than 7,000 known varieties of apples, and the apples literally followed Mankind while conquering the World. One could say that the apple is the Men's best friend.

Unluckily, of this endless variety we can find in our grocery store only seven-eight kinds of apples, that covers more than 90% of the whole market. That's a pity for instance that one of our favourite kinds of apple, the Melannurca, known in Italy as the queen of apples, sweet and tasty, is impossible to find elsewhere.

Since ancient times, the apples were used to obtain delicious drinks, even alcoholic ones. The cider, nowadays, is a ligthly alcoholic drinks whose alcoholic volume range from 3% to 8%, until 12% in some case. The production of apple drinks is known for instance in the ancient Egypt, in ancient Greece and Rome. The cider is very popular in the European Atlantic coast, in countries like Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, England and Ireland. 

The english name cider and the spanish name "Sidra" derivates from the latin word Sicera, that comes from the Hebrew word "Shekar", or "drink that makes you feel dizzy". Already in the high middle ages, the sidra was very popular in all the Cantabrian Mountains, and we have some information about the cultivations of apples there already in the VIII century, during the Asturian Kingdoms. During the Carolingian empire, under Charlemagne, in the IX century, we can find the very first mention of the production of what we intend as cider in commercial documents.

Taking a huge leap forward, in the XIX century, spanish regions of Asturias and Guipuzcoa-Basque Country becomes the propulsory center of the spanish sidra. In the region of Asturias, the consumption of sidra reach the 54 liter per capita per year. An astonishing volume and probably a Guinness World record!

Today the Sidra de Asturias is the most important traditional drink of that spanish region, and it is widely used in the whole Spain to celebrate events like bithdays, Christmas and New Year's Eve.
The 12 of November 2002, the Sidra de Asturias has become a D.O.P. protected label (denominación de origen protegida). Today the production of the sidra is also a touristical appeal for Asturias, for instance there is a county called the "Mancomunidad de la sidra" (the county of the sidra) that offers to the visitor many activities related to this delicious sparkling drink.

With the apples you can literally do anything you want: desserts, drinks, purees, creams, ice creams and, even if we associate the apples with sweet dishes more than with savoury ones, there's a quite a list of main courses using apple too, like the dish that we'll show you today!

Ingredients:

- Carnaroli or Arborio rice 

- 1 liter of vegetables stock

- 1 onion 

- 1 or 2 apples (to taste)

- 1 spoon of butter 

- Parmigiano Reggiano cheese 

- 1 (abundant) glass of Sidra de Asturias 

- 2 spoonful of extra virgin olive oil

- a pinch of salt

Preparation: 

The preparation for our risotto is just like any other risotto, for instance you can see the steps to follow looking at our "Saffron risotto" recipe, but in this case remember to use the Sidra de Asturias instead of the white wine.

1- Put the pan on medium-high heat, drizzle a little bit of olive oil and put inside the pan the diced onions (à là brunoise), and let it cook for some seconds. Then add the rice and let it toast for a little bit. This step, as we said in other occasions, is very crucial to obtain a good risotto. And here goes the change with the traditional risotto recipe: at this point you would add the wine, but in this recipe you'll add the Sidra de Asturias. Stir it until the liquid has completely evaporated.

Note: We already explained how to calculate the quantity of rice to add into the pan in a traditional way, but we'll repeat here just in case you've missed it.

I've learned to cook risotto from the mothers and the grandmas, and they used to tell me to use "un pugnetto per ognuno e uno in più per la padella", that is a fistful of rice for each one and one extra for the pan. Clearly it depends also on the size of the hands, in my case it would be two fistful for each one, since I've got very small hands hehehe! This is a very efficent way to calculate the quantities needed, but we also love to cook a little bit more of rice in order to have an extra portion to prepare later our beloved supplìs, crocchès and so on...you can do great things with you risotto leftovers!

2- Now little by little we'll add our hot vegetable stock to the pan and we'll keep stirring the rice, in order to help the risotto to release the starch and so obtain the typical creamy texture. We'll add a little bit of stock at time and we'll keep on stirring until we see the liquid totally absorbed. We'll continue doing so for about 18 minutes, and we'll add the chopped apples halfway through the cooking.

3- When our risotto is realy (after about 18 minutes) we turn off the heat and we'll add a spoonful of butter and the grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and we stir energetically. This step is known as "mantecatura" in italian. And there you have it!

Serve it freshly cooked.

Buon appetito! 

The Pastiera Napoletana recipe

The Spring is coming! And a brand new project comes along with it, we'll be partecipating in the second issue of the Blogirls 2.0 Magazine!

You can read our article about the pastiera napoletana, it's in spanish, but kitchen it's an universal language isn't it? Just make sure you don't miss it! You will enjoy it a lot!

In Italy, Easter time is usually spent around a good table. From north to south, you'll find a breathtaking variety of dishes, typical of this season. Mainly, Easter dishes are usually desserts: Easter Colomba, Chocolate eggs, Casatiellos, Cassatas, and so on. Today we'll talk about the Pastiera, maybe the most ancient dessert of one of the World's most ancient cities: Naples.

Its origins are legendary, in one of them, the mermaid Parthenope, having failed in enchanting the hero of the Odissey, Ulysses, decided to quit her life jumping from a cliff. But the mermaid survived, and the sea brought her in the Gulf of Naples, where she was saved from fishermen that help her recovering. Parthenope was since then always welcomed there. They say that the mermaid used to emerge from the waters every springtime to celebrate the friendship with the neapolitan people.

In one of these occasion, the people wanted to give a tribute to the mermaid: they gave her flour, symbol of wealth, ricotta cheese, symbol of abundance, eggs, symbol of fertility, wheat cooked with the milk, symbol of the union between the animal and vegetal reigns, flowers typical of the Campania region and the honey, today changed with the sugar, symbol of the sweet chant of the syren. The following morning, the mermaid went back to the shore with a pie cooked by the Gods of the Olympus themselves with the gifts the people gave to Parthenope. This is how the Pastiera Napoletana was born, or at least this is what tells us the legend.

What is sure is that food historians believe this dessert was created in the Greek Neapolis, and was a dish cooked to celebrate Ceres, the goddess of the harvest (Ceres gave the name to the cereals). The recipe was then perfectioned in the XVI century in the Santa Patrizia convent, where you can find the most baroque church you've ever seen. The Santa Patrizia convent is also in front of the World famous "via dei presepi", where you can find lots of nativity scene statues all years round.

The first time that the Pastiera is mentioned is in the year 1634, in the book "Il gatto Cenerentola" (in english, "Cinderella the cat") by Giambattista Basile. It may result interesting to notice that this fairy tale was then modified by Charles Perrault for his "Cinderella". We can say that the pastiera starts out with the Odissey, continue with the Mermaid and ends with Cinderella!

We can tell you another fun fact: the queen of Naples, Maria Therese of Habsurg-Teschen, the wife of Ferdinand II of Bourbon, was famous to the people as the "queen that never smiles". That nickname was used until she tried a slice of the pastiera. The pie taste was just too good not to smile! The king, after that, declared: "we had to use the pastiera to see my wife smile in public. Now we'll have to wait until next Easter to see her smiling again!".
Yes, the pastiera is an authentic cure for bad mood, just like the spring days in Naples!

Recipe: (for two pastieras some 23 cms wide approx.)

- Ingredients of the filling:

 550 g. of grano cotto; 700 g. of ricotta (both a goat and cow ricotta); 400 g. of sugar; 500 ml. of milk; 50 g. of butter; 180 g. aprox. of candied fruit (candied citron, orange, etc.); 5 g. of cinnamon powder; 5 ml. of Millefiori; 6 eggs; lemon zest to taste.

- For the shortcrust pastry:

450 g. of flour; 120 g. of sugar; 60 g. of lard (cold); 180 g. of butter (cold and cut into dices); 3 egg yolks; 1 spoonful (5 g.) of Vanillina or vanilla extract; orange zest.

Preparation:

1- Let's start preparing the grano cotto. Pour the canned cooked wheat (ready to use) in a pan, along with the milk and the butter. Stir it for some 15 minutes with a wooden spoon at medium-low heat, until you obtain a creamy texture. You can easily find the grano cotto at every italian grocery store, or very easily online (it's easy to find it at Ebay too). If you can't find it, you can easily do it at home*.

2- Prepare the pasta frolla, the italian version of the shortcrust pastry. To do so, we can use our mixer. Add first the dry ingredients, then add the butter and the lard cut into dices (both must be cold!), mix it all and add the egg yolks. Mix it again and you'll see a sandy texture. To obtain an homogeneous dough and easy to work with, add slowly 3 or 4 spoonful of really cold water. Knead the dough into a ball and pop it into the fridge covered with plastic wrap for about half an hour.

3- For the filling, put the ricotta in a bowl, but be careful! We don't want a wet ricotta, make sure that yo've dried it before using. Add the sugar to the bowl and mix it all. Then add the cream of grano cotto you've previously prepared, and add the eggs and the cinnamon too. Mix it all until you'll obtain an homogeneous cream. At last, add the Millefiori essence and the candied fruit. The Millefiori in Southern Italy means pastiera, but since it is hard to find, you can use rosewater instead.

4- Grease the moulds that you choose to bake, cover the bottom and the sides with the pasta frolla shortcrust pastry, then add the filling. The moulds usually are high, but you can use whatever mould you want, but it is important that they're metallic ones. The surface of the filling will be covered with stripes of shortcrust pastry, shaping a sort of grating. This is useful not only to decorate the surface, but also to contain the filling that will inflate during the baking. Paint the surface with beaten eggs to give to our pie a golden colour and there you are! Ready to bake!

5- Bake the pastiera in a preheated oven at 180ºC, for anytime between 60 to 75 minutes. Once baked, leave the pastiera to cool completely. It is an Easter dessert, and the tradition say that it has to be prepared on Maundy Thurday and eaten on Easter Sunday, three days after...but come on! Who can resist?

* Homemade preparation of the grano cotto: this is the key ingredient of the pie, but even if today this is very easy to find ready to use, maybe you want to know how to prepare it at home. This how you can cook it to yourself!
This is a large process, let the wheat grains in water for three days (change the water often), and then boil it in water for some hours. Then boil it again in milk for at least three hours. It is not a difficult process, but it takes a long long time to prepare your homemade grano cotto! We usually use the bottled grano cotto, that is very cheap too and it tastes just as good as the homemade one!

Happy Easter and...Buon Appetito!

Risotto: leftovers recipes!

What if today you use the meal you've left in the previous meal? The leftover can always be used to make great dishes, just change their aspect, add some ingredients and...there you have it! A completely different dish! Often it is great for us, overall when we have no time to prepare a dish right from the start. We'll keep on posting ideas, but today we'll focus on our risotto-themed articles, we've already talked about how to choose the right kind of rice, or how to cook a great saffron risotto, but today we'll deal with what to do with the delicious risotto you haven't finished.
  
It is worth mentioning that the risotto is to be eaten when served for the first time, if you reheat it, well, it will lose all its charme, and it may result too thick, even if some loves it this way...
We use the risotto in thousands recipes, and often we cook too much on purpose, to have some risotto left for our creations! Today we'll bring you just some of these ideas.


Rice is something very hard to precisely measure into portions, and risotto is no exception to that, so, when you have distributed all the risotto to your guests and you've still half of the pot full of risotto, do not despair! Put it in a tupperware, in a dish, in whatever you like most and put it into the fridge covered with a plastic wrap. In this way it will densify, thanks to the starch and the characteristic creaminess and it will be easy to work with.

                                       Risotto Croquettes

In the Italian gastronomy, we find many dishes with rice that is made up as a croquette, or a croquetas. For instance, we can find the famous sicilian "arancine", or the roman "supplì", two dishes that we'll meet in another occasion.

Croquettes made with risotto leftovers

Ingredients:

• The leftover of the risotto we prepared "yesterday" that we've kept in our fridge.
• Mozzarella fresh cheese, Edam cheese or similar cheeses, we need it to melt.
• Whatever we like, this is one of those recipes I call "bottom of the fridge"
• Breadcrumbs and eggs
• Oil to fry them

 

Our risotto croquetas ready to be fried or frozen

You can use your rice to make a croquette, or a croqueta in Spanish. Just use the rice you've left in the fridge overnight (or anyway enough time to have it densified a bit). Wet your hands with  some oil in order to be easier for us to work the rice and just take a portion of risotto and put in its interior a portion of mozzarella or a "filante" cheese. You can add peas, carrots bites, pieces of ham, prosciutto or jamon...come on, just take all these ingredients you find at the bottom of your fridge...or even outside of it! Of course, you had better to check what ingredients there were in the original risotto, for instance, our risotto was with shrimps and tuna, so we decided to add just some cheese and it was great!
Just shape the risotto into a sphere, or a football, just like a croquette. Pass it through beated eggs, then through breadcrumbs (you can do this twice in order to have a crispier crust), fry them and...there you have them!

You can freeze them too! That option is perfect to have them ready for other days...or even for days when we're in a hurry, why not? ;)

The interior of our risotto croquettes

Super yummy!

These croquettes can also be easily transformed into...meatballs! You just have to toss them in a saucy super tasty pot after you've fried them!

Crispy tart

In this other recipe, you just have to add a drizzle of oil in a pan and toss there the risotto, flat it with a spoon or a spatula in order to thin it. Toast it for just some minutes, and then turn it upside down, just like you would like with a frittata or a Spanish tortilla, and toast it on the other side.

It will result a super crispy and super tasty salted tart! Everybody loves it, from the kids to the grandpas! You can now cut it into different portions and you can even eat it with your hands...and there's nothing better than eat tasty food with hands!

A crispy risotto tart

Another idea it is to add some cheese, tomato sauce and/or other ingredients as a topping and use the "tart" as a base for our..uhm...pizza...sorta!

Thin and crispy!

You can also make some hamburger-shaped risotto leftovers, too! Just put it over a grill...I assure you that in this way kids will enjoy a lot eating things that otherwise wouldn't even think to eat. Just hide them inside your "hamburger"!

"hamburger" made with risotto leftovers

Ok, another idea we had is to make a Spanish tortilla with our risotto...just beat eggs and add the rice, or even as a filling for salted crepe, or crespelle, and there are many many ideas yet to share, I assure you!

Use your imagination, the important thing is avoid that our risotto leftovers will ever finish into garbage!


Any ideas about that? What recipe would you do with your risotto leftovers? Tell us, please!

Buon appetito !

Cheese filled garlic dough ball recipe

Italians and Garlic, an history of love and...hate! This might be curious to hear to a northern american, but it is true. The garlic, an ingredient incredibly ancient and super healthy, is almost as loved in some region as it is hated in many others. Generally speaking, but with huge exceptions like Piedmont and Tuscany, in the central and overall in northern Italy is not so used. In Lombardy we have a paradoxical situation where is almost...well...how can I express it...is tolerated, let's say it in this way. In the southern Italy is incredibly loved and used in excellent recipes both for its flavour and its healthy properties. This is for sure an iconic indicator of how variegated Italy is in terms of both culture and traditions: what is beloved somewhere is not so well received in another. We can say that literally many Italies exists, unified in its charming and deeply humanistic culture. This will result self-evident to everyone who actually throughout the italian geography from north to south, and this is undoubtly one of the most charming feature of the Boot.

As for the use of the garlic and many other things, southern Italy may be considered more similar to Spain than to northern Italy. The emigration from the southern Italy to north America exported the culture of the garlic, and this is the reason that generated the equation: "italian cuisine equals garlic", generalizing a regional product as if it was used by the whole country with the same love.

Garlic cloves

But how was created garlic bread? It is considered to be an "americanized" version of an ancient "poor" traditional dish, the bruschetta, now a Tuscan typical antipasto. The bruschetta was consumed already in the roman era, and was made with old bread rubbed with garlic and drizzled with strong olive oil. Even if now the bruschetta is a gourmet antipasto to be eaten with the best italian extra vergin olive oil, originally it was rubbed with garlic and covered with strong oil in order to let the bread last longer in the poor cuisine of the ancient times.
European restaurants take the garlic bread back from the italo-american cuisine, and today it may be find in lots of Italian-inspired restaurants almost everywhere...north of the Alps. The main difference between the italo-american garlic bread and the bruschetta it's what is considered to be the main ingredient in terms of flavour: in garlic bread is the garlic and in the bruschetta is the olive oil, making it essential to be made with a very good olive oil. We have documents of menus in US with garlic bread in it as old as the second half of the Forties.

Recipe:

We wanted to give our own touch to the garlic bread, taking a little bit here and a little bit there, using instead of the usual bread the pizza dough and using a different sauce, inspired in the huge variety of canarian sauces known as "mojo", that will be sometime soon the topic of our post.

For this recipe you can use the typical pizza dough you usually use, the one you prefer best, every kind of pizza dough works for what we suggest you here. We usually use a very thin kind of pizza dough that we've mentioned in a previous post (if you want to read it, click here), because it's easy and quick to prepare.

It is the perfect recipe for a starter or an antipasto, it's better to eat it still warm, but cold are super tasty as well ;).
We can prepare the pizza dough and the garlic dough balls many days before our guests come to our house, since the rest of the preparation is pretty simple. Success is granted!

Ingredients:

• 1 pizza dough (recipe here)
• 3 garlic cloves (to taste)
• 30 g. of parsley
• 80 -100 ml of olive oil (better if it's extra virgin)
• Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (Always the original! To taste, but not less than 25-30 grams)
• Mozzarella filante cheese or any melting stringy cheese
• salt and black pepper to taste

Preparation:

1- With the pizza dough we make some little balls, trying to make them kinda uniform, we will fill them with the kind of cheese we've chosen. We put them in an oven tray separated each one from anothen, since they'll grow a little bit. We bake them in a preheated oven at 180º C for some 15 minutes or until we see them becoming golden brown.

Garlic dough balls ready for the oven!

2- While we're baking our garlic dough balls, we prepare our sauce (or "quasi mojo" he he!), very fast and easy to do. We can use a food processor, a mixer, a Thermomix...whatever you want, and here resides maybe the biggest difference between the mojo canario and this sauce, since the first one is traditionally made by hand and clearly has not cheese in it. Add all the ingredients of the sauce (garlic, parsley, olive oil, salt, pepper and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese) and process them together until you obtain a nice sauce.

...and garlic dough balls ready to be eaten in 3, 2, 1...

3- When our garlic dough balls are ready, we take them off of the oven and (when they're still hot) we immediately put them in a bowl together with the sauce. We stir them all together well in order to let all of the dough balls to wet well into the sauce and get all of the flavour. We can put a little bit more of grated cheese above the dough balls and...eat them as quick as you can, they literally will disappear in a matter of seconds!

The interior of our garlic dough ball...nom nom!

Buon appetito!

AnGie

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