polenta – Sheetar.com

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 10

By Sheetar 16 September 2014 15 September 2014

Wow. So this is a pizza. Kinda. The crust is polenta that was baked in the oven to help crisp it up. Then the toppings were added. OH THE TOPPINGS. Husband was away, so I was free to add as much fungus as I pleased, and I did. The mushroom guy was on vacation the week prior, but found a bunch of Chanterelle mushrooms growing in the wild, so he grabbed them and brought them home. This was the first time I’ve ever had Chanterelles, and just typing about them is making my mouth water. They’re peppery but sweet and might just be my new favorite mushroom. I sauteed the mushrooms with some onions and peppers. Once the crust (a polenta crust with a wee bit of butter) was crispy enough from baking in the oven, I globbed some homemade Cherry Jam (from locally picked cherries), blue cheese spread, then put on the onions/mushrooms/peppers. On top of that I sprinkled on some more blue cheese and popped the whole thing back in the oven to mush together. This was INCREDIBLE. The whole thing disappeared in one sitting since it was about a 12″ pizza anyway. The cherry jam ended up oozing off the pizza and made the crust a little mushy, but it really didn’t matter – it just meant I had to use a fork and knife instead of picking each slice up. It was worth it!

Ingredients:
Corn Meal – Mill at Anselma
Butter – Spring Creek Farms
Peppers – Charlestown Farm
Chanterelle Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Onions – Jack’s Farm
Blue Cheese (spread and crumble) – Birchrun Hills
Cherries – Walnut Springs Farm
Non Local – Sugar (in jam)

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 24

By Sheetar 2 November 2012 3 November 2012

On my own this week (and a little behind, still/again, on posting), but here’s glorious week 24. Simple, as is my style, we have sweet potatoes, mild burgundy Italian pork sausage, and the fancy bit is the saffron polenta stars, pan fried to be crispy. Saffron polenta, you say? Saffron isn’t local! OH YES IT IS. If you can grow crocuses in your area, you can grow saffron. Three little red filaments poke out of every little purple saffron crocus flower that blooms in the fall. Pull out the red filaments, dry, and you too can have your own saffron. This was made with the saffron harvested last fall (I usually get about a teaspoon of saffron from my six bulbs). It’s not a lot, and requires checking for new flowers every morning for about a month, but pays off! For the price of six bulbs (which cost about $15 for the six), I’ve got free saffron for as long as the bulbs last (typically a lifetime or more). It’s pretty neat and is the big star of this meal (HURRR GET IT?!).

Pork Sausage with Sweet Potatoes and Saffron Polenta:
Sweet Potatoes – Jack’s Farm
Mild Italian Burgundy Pork Sausage – Countrytime Farm
Cornmeal – Mill at Anselma
Saffron – My Garden
Non local – Salt, pepper, olive oil

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 11

By Sheetar 25 July 2012 25 July 2012

Sometimes, I impress myself. I’m not one to really enjoy cooking, which is partly what this whole thing has been about. I force myself to do this personal challenge of cooking locally all summer long, and it makes me actually cook. Every once in a while, I really enjoy making the meal because it’s something new and different, and that’s what I’ve got here. The garden has been giving me ZUCCHINI (all caps, on purpose, because they seem to think they’re watermelons and not zucchini). Anyone who has grown them before knows that if you neglect the plant for two hours, you end up with baseball bats and that I’m really not exaggerating. Ours, instead of growing in length, grew in width, spectacularly, and seemingly overnight. For scale’s sake, that’s a 9″ plate. The zucchini were really seedy inside, but I sliced them up anyway and once I pulled the seeds out, I had enormous zucchini rings. Then inspiration hit. Take zucchini rings, grill, add freshly made polenta (1 cup cornmeal, 3 cup water, boil while stirring until it pulls away from the pan) to the center, bake, flip, top as a pizza and bake until the cheese melts. And that’s exactly what’s on my plate above – I used blue cheese and caramelized onions for the topping, and the sauce was even made from local tomatoes, courtesy of Jack’s Farm who was selling a big big bag of tomatoes for $6 (there’s another whole pint of sauce in the freezer too!). I really don’t have a recipe to give you for this, because it’s the kind of thing that is very basic and I’d rather give you the idea and let you go create.

Zucchini Polenta Pizza:
Monster Overgrown Zucchini – My garden
Onion – Brogue Hydroponics
Cornmeal – Mill at Anselma
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Tomato Sauce – via tomatoes from Jack’s Farm
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil