Creamy Polenta with Sausage

Apparently my browser doesn't believe that "polenta" is a real word, but it's a really delicious word. On Sunday we had "Creamy Polenta with Sausage" from Mark Bittman's column in "The Minimalist" in the NY Times last month. I really like both his column and his blog (Bitten blog, there's a link to it on the right), and I used to be able to get the video versions of the Minimalist recipes podcasted, but that stopped working in November.

In general, I thought this was really yummy. I was able to cook some sausage and polenta at the same time pretty easily. I got a little hectic at points when the sausage wasn't browning on all sides so I had to hold it against the pan with my tongs in different angles, and stir the polenta, and check on my pie all at the same time. After the first 5-10 minutes the polenta stopped sucking up as much moisture and it let me just cook it.

Not too surprisingly, I wasn't able to find actual polenta at the store, so I substituted normal yellow cornmeal and halved the time. At 15 minutes I tasted it, and it was the right texture.

Overall, it worked, but it was a little light for a dinner on it's own. in hindsight, I should have prepped a salad beforehand. Instead, we just ate some pie and ice cream. I'm not sure everyone in our house is a fan of the texture of polenta, so I might make it again in a smaller batch for lunches.

In fact, I did save some leftovers and managed to microwave the polenta pretty successfully for lunch on Monday. I'm saving the rest of the sausage in the freezer for "Crazy Pasta" sometime in the future (when I'll define that as well).