SC - pulentium

[Decker, Terry D.]

> Greetings,
> On another list polenta was discussed.  On researching the word origin I
> found that its origin as a food is a chestnut base from the Etruscans. 
> None of the online sources of Apicius have a recipe for it so I was
> wondering if one of you fine SCA cooks who has Apicius' recipe book could
> check to see if it contains a recipe for pulentium.  Any help would be
> appreciated.
> Celestria 
> 
I don't have Apicius or Pliny handy, but polenta is fairly straight forward.
Take 1 cup of coarsely ground gain meal, 2 to 3 cups of water, and about a
teaspoon of salt.  Put the salt in the water, bring the water to a boil and
add the grain meal.  Stir often.  Cook it near the boil for about five to
ten minutes then simmer until the meal absorbs the water and the cooked mass
starts to pull away from the sides of the pot.  Put the mush into a bowl and
let it cool and set up.  Invert the bowl on a plate and you have a loaf of
polenta.  Use a string to cut it.

Polenta is descriptive of the mush either as a thick gruel or a loaf.  I've
seen recipes from Antiquity for both wheat and barley polenta.  If I
remember correctly, the wheat polenta with honey is from Apicius.  The
modern incarnation of this dish is made with corn meal.  I grew up knowing
it as corn meal mush.

Bear
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================