Italian Food 2: Polenta

While pasta is known all over the world, there is another very traditional Italian dish that is relatively unknown: Polenta.

Polenta is simply coarse, yellow cornflour (cornmeal) boiled with water until it becomes a paste. It is a definitely poor dish, a cheap but filling one. In a sense, polenta in northern Italy has a similar role to rice in Asia: a filling accompainmet to more tasty and precious food, like meat.

To make polenta, one simply has to add cornmeal to a pan of boiling water (I don't remember the exact doses; anyway it is relatively little water), little by little and stirring vigourously with a wooden spoon all the time to avoid the formation of grumes (but as an heretic I prefer to add the cornmeal to cold water and then bring the mixture to the boil: it is the thermal shock of cornmeal being poured in hot water that causes it to coagulate); then add salt to taste and continue to boil stirring until the polenta is quite solid: if you stick the spoon vertically in the middle of it, the spoon should not fall over. When polenta is almost ready one can also add to it a little of olive oil or butter. Typically polenta is then poured on a wooden board as in the picture and served.

Our lovely dish can then be eaten alone, but usually it is topped with a vast choice of food: parmigiano cheese and olive oil for a basic version; other cheese such as gorgonzola for a stronger taste; tomato sauce; sausage (the tasty Italian ones) sauce; mushrooms sauce; bean stew and finally wild boar, rabbit or hare casserole - and even more outlandish things such as snails or frogs. Of course back in the time sauces or even cheese were already luxuries, so the peasants often had to content themselves with whatever they could scrape together: some had one single smoked herring for a whole family, so they lovingly rubbed the herring over polenta to transfer the flavour, and allowed the fish to last for more than one meal. Another recipe involves adding pork and cabbage to the boiling polenta, and the poorest could afford only crushed bones- while people more well-off could add to it even fresh sausage if not fillet meat.

When polenta cools down, it becomes firmer and can be sliced into slices to be deep-fried or grilled later; then used again as a base to be covered with cheese or some sauce. Wafer-thin cured lard, that will melt on the polenta slice, if you really want to try something heavenly.

Gawd, I'm hungry now...

Wild Nights

Last night I went to a metal gig: one of the bands (Nifelheim) had this guy as singer. Aren't you all envious now? Envious of that balding head, punched-in-the-eyes face painting, spikes and roofing nails?

But let's go by order: I needed to drink a beer or two, eat a burger (straight from the microwave!) and withdraw some cash from a cash machine with a long queue in front of it, so I missed the first band - Necro Ritual. But my mate told me they weren't worth it.

The Dutch band NOX (nitrogen oxides are not involved in this case) followed, and they played a no-nonsense canonic death metal. Nothing too original but very fast and well done; I quite enjoyed that gig.

Next band: Adorior. It seems I am always the shortest chap at gigs, so I have to struggle to see what's happening on stage. This time, first I heard a female voice announcing the band, and then a barely human growl over a maelstrom of furious guitar and drums. Finally I managed to find a clear spot, and I saw a chubby Asian girl in full metal attire (ammo belt included) growling into the mike with a truculent expression on her face. I'm not sure I would like to have her whispering sweet things into my ear - also because Cockney isn't a very sexy accent. Probably it's the least sexy dialect in the world. Adorior's music could be described as Sodom meet Venom and go out to raise hell with Darkthrone - or something like that. Classy? Not a chance in hell; they're a textbook example of how to be gross with thrash/black metal (not that Sodom have ever been posh anyway) . But Adorior have a powerful live impact, and know how to raise hell. And they're regulars at my metal pub as well - thus I went down into the pit. In order to introduce the last peaceful song, our sweet girl said "I wanna see blood, I wanna see broken fucking bones!" No thanks: I'm up for some moshing, but I actually broke my nose at The Haunted's gig, and it wasn't fun. I'm sure it underlined well the musical violence of the band, but I spent a miserable night in an A&E department and now my nose sports a slight bend at its top. Adorior's gig ended without accidents, and I went to have a beer.

The following band, the German Desaster failed to interest me although they weren't too bad, I think.

Then things began to degenerate, with the alcohol level reaching safety limits for many of the people in the venue. The idiot pictured above walked on stage, and graced us with songs such as "Satanic Sacrifice": that may sound outrageous to newbies and puritans, but actually it's so 90s. And due to the kind of sounds used by black metal - that is, full-throttle reverb over distortion - guitar is most often an undistinguishable mess. I prefer to actually hear riffs and eventual melodies. So I loitered around the bar area chatting with my mates. And what can you do when you meet a good-looking girl so drunk she is pretending/convinced she can only speak and understand Portuguese? I don't know about you, but I proposed her to communicate using body language. Anyway, a friend or whatever of hers arrived and dragged the girl away before things went totally downhill. The idiot on stage replied with a "Fuck you" to the crowd asking for more music when it was just 22:30 and the gig thus ended - and I decided it was time to have a last greasy spring roll at the food outlet next door to the venue and finally head home.