Nom Noms Nº1: Cherrytastic Polenta
Incredibly tasty, potentially award-winning, prospectively pleasurable recipes & pairings from the Yield Kitchen.
Nom Noms Nº1: Cherrytastic Polenta
If there is one thing the Yield team loves like wine, it's food. So we're introducing, Nom Noms—recipes & pairings only an onomatopoeic adjective could describe.
First up, a series of meat-free recipes that will pair gloriously with our beloved reds. Buon appetite!
This past year, the Yield household went vegetarian. That’s right, this wine-loving duo stopped bringing meat and fish to their dinner table. The hardest part? Not intense burger cravings or missing the smell of a roasting chicken. The hardest part was missing many of my beloved red wines, so I decided to get creative. Recipes like this prove you don’t have to have a meaty main to bring out the beauty of richer wine options.
First up, we tackle Nebbiolo. This favorite variety from the Piedmont region is the grape of Barolo and Barbaresco. Typically, Nebbiolo is laden with bright cherry, Italian herbs, and notes of roses and balsamic. It’s also loaded with tannins, which makes it an ideal pairing for what we sommeliers call “richer” foods. What we mean is fat-- yummy, melty, glorious fat. Classically, the wine would be paired with boar or beef. Here, we use taleggio as our main source of fat. . . and just a tidge of butter. We fold the ooey gooey cheese into polenta and top with sauteed mushrooms and a cherry balsamic glaze. It’s so tasty, my mouth is watering just thinking about it.
“Recipes like this prove you don’t have to have a meaty main to bring out the beauty of richer wine options.”
Ingredients
1 cup polenta/ corn grits
½ cup Taleggio cheese, grated
⅔ cup milk
Butter, 3-4 tablespoons
5 cloves of garlic
1 shallot
1 yellow onion
1-2 bay leaves
Rosemary
thyme
½ oz dried porcini mushrooms
1 cup cherries
⅔ cup balsamic vinegar
Agave (1 tablespoon) or honey (2 tablespoons)
1 lb mushrooms- whatever variety you like, or make a mix!
Olive oil
Parmesan (optional, for garnish)
Mise en Place
If you have fresh cherries, good for you-- go ahead and pit them. If your cherries are frozen, set them out to start defrosting.
Prep your garlic- smash 4 cloves. Mince 1.
Quarter your shallot.
Quarter your onion.
Grate your Taleggio cheese. It’s soft, so if it falls apart and becomes more of a crumble, it’s all good.
Set aside your rosemary and thyme- roughly a half teaspoon of each, can be fresh or dried. Feel free to eyeball it.
Wash your mushrooms. For baby bellas or criminis, I recommend quartering them. Set them on a layer of paper towels to absorb the excess moisture, so you get a nice browning when you go in for the sautee.
Make your porcini broth. In a pot, place 5 cups of water, the dried porcinis, quartered onion, shallot, garlic and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, and then reduce to a healthy simmer. Within 30 minutes, you’ll be developing some great flavor, so if that’s all you have, no worries! If you’ve got the time to spare, feel free to leave the pot simmering for up to 2 hours to get an even greater depth of flavor.
Make the polenta. Follow the instructions on the package (typically 3 cups of water to 1 cup of polenta), but instead of using plain water, substitute in that delicious broth you just created. If you wanna get fancy, you can put the broth through a fine mesh strainer, so you only have liquid, but if you just let the big bits float to the bottom and skim the broth from the top, your polenta will be just as delicious.
Glaze time. Sautee 1 clove of minced garlic, rosemary, and thyme in olive oil over medium-low heat for approximately 2 minutes. Add cherries and sautee for an additional 3 minutes. Add balsamic vinegar and agave or honey, and simmer until the mixture reduces by approximately ⅔. You’ll be left with a thick, well, glaze-like texture. Remove from the heat when complete, and let the mixture hang out while you sautee the mushrooms. The glaze will thicken a bit more as it cools.
Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in large pan over medium-high heat. Add mushroom mixture, and a good pinch of salt. Sautee for approximately 7 minutes.
Complete the polenta. Warm up that ⅔ cup of milk (I did it in the microwave, but be fancy if you like). Stir milk into the polenta. Fold in the taleggio. Taste, and add salt if needed. I also recommend a pinch of white pepper, but this is completely optional.
Plate her up. The perfect vessel for this dish is what is affectionately called a “plowl” in my home. It’s basically somewhere between a plate and a bowl-- the thing pasta is served in at 9 out of 10 Italian restaurants. Plop the polenta in the plowl or bowl. Add sauteed mushrooms atop, and drizzle the cherry glaze around your creation. Garnishing with a little Parmesan is also a nice touch. Buon appetito!
“I nommed all my polenta before I remembered to take a photo so I had to redraw it from scratch.”