Italy -Polenta with Stewed Chicken
Polenta has been a family recipe since my childhood. Every so often, my mom would get out the old cast iron polenta pot (pictured below) and start stirrin up a storm on the stove. S asked what polenta was the other day, and you can buy the ready made kind in the store, so I decided to do so and make some stewed chicken like we did when I was a kid. My sister and I would call this "slimy chicken" because my mom would leave the skins on and it might have been too refined of a taste for kids. But alas, as adults, it is delicious.
My talented mother made a bunch of photobooks on Shutterfly with our family's recipes. So pardon me for just taking a picture of her already beautifully done work instead of reinventing the wheel. Feel free to follow the recipe and make polenta from scratch (as you can see my grandmother on my dad's side doing below) (more later about the collossal difference between my dad's side -Northern Italian, and my mom's side -Southern, later). Or you can buy the store kind, its usually in the isle, on the top shelf, in the pasta section (also pictured below). You can make the stewed chicken with it or eat it with pasta sauce or any other combo you can find on the internet.
My great grandmother's polenta pot.
My Grandma Gladys, my dad's mom, serving the polenta.
Directions for making polenta from scratch.
Recipe for stewed chicken.
My mom's beautiful cookbook, from my dad's family recipes.
​When you buy the polenta from the store, slice it up and saute it in a bit of olive oil.
Here's what the store bought polenta looks like, and of course a bottle of wine is never a bad addition.