Upping my iso game with Polenta Chips

Last few weeks have been surreal. There is something different about this second lockdown.I think when we first all went in to restrictions during March there was this hope that the lockdown is to win the battle. We were cautious but also curious to explore what an #isolyf looked like.

We did not anticipate then that there would be another lockdown.Now we know that there could be a third and fourth and god knows how many…It has taken the life out of iso to an extent. This feeling of not knowing the endpoint and not being able to see the light at the end of this COVID tunnel is taking it’s toll in different ways. Like most people I am going through low days and some not so low days.

Last few weeks I went through a phase of no cooking to cooking seven days non-stop.

But today I wanted to cook to destress and treat myself .The wintery Melbourne morning called for something warm rich and soul satisfying.In short something with Carbs and Fat.

I have been wanting to eat polenta chips for a while now and I know that it will be a long time before I can go out to eat nice.

During a recent trip to health food store I bought a pack of a good quality cornmeal. I set out to fail coz really you can’t expect an Indian to ace polenta chips in the first go. I have thrown out an expired pack of cornmeal before too. This time I had given myself a deadline of three months.

My polenta chips experience began in Melbourne in 2009. But till 2014 I didn’t think much of them other than a bland piece of corn. It was in 2014, when I was in Adelaide attending a Telehealth conference with my friend Warren, that I tasted one of the best polenta chips ever at Jamie Oliver’s restaurant .On a stroll in the CBD we came across the restaurant and I coaxed Warren to have a small bite there. I was a huge Jamie fan then.

Jamie Oliver’s restaurant ,Adelaide 2014

I remember we had ordered sphagetti alla norma (that I had tweeted about and Jamie’s team had liked my tweet !) , polenta chips, arancini balls and two drinks .We couldn’t believe that the entire meal costed us only 66$, something that pleased both of us tremendously !

They were the best polenta chips I had ever had. They were piping hot, crisp on outside and soft on inside and just melted in the mouth. I barely touched the aioli they came with.

So the assembly of ingredients, mainly Corn meal, parmesan, rosemary ,salt , vegetable stock, took 15 min.

Making the polenta was damn easy and it actually came together within minutes. I set it in a lined rectangle baking tray ,pressing it evenly with my hands . I wraped some foil on the tray and chucked it in the fridge to set.

It did require the sauce to boil off for almost an hour but I was not in a rush.Polenta was setting in the fridge and the sauce was boiling off.

It was close to lunchtime so I knew I had to make something else to go with the chips ( and a back up plan!)

I had some stale sourdough bread and I blitzed it to make crumbs.Fried the crumbs in olive oil, added sea salt and finely chopped garlic, added some parsley and lemon rind and the panagrattato was ready.

The pasta was boiling in a pot of salted water and I reserved some of it once it was done.

It was time to check the polenta (1hr 30 min later). Polenta had set perfectly! I cut thin strips, separated them and brushed two tbsp of olive oil and sprinkled some chopped rosemary and dry polenta (cornmeal).It went in to oven fanforced 240 degrees Celsius for thirty minutes.

The sauce had boiled off and I added some Harissa paste to it to give it a kick and blitzed it to a dip consistency.

I heated some olive oil in a pan added a pack of sliced brown mushrooms and added the pasta once the mushrooms were cooked. I tossed in some reserved pasta water and topped it all wall with juice of one lemon and the panagrattato.

The chips were almost ready and I opened the oven to turn them once. They came out fantastic and my son gobbled them up pretty quickly.

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