Wednesday, February 11, 2009

White corn meal

I love when I make something I've never made before and I am pleasantly surprised with the outcome. A couple weeks ago I bought P.A.N. Pre-cooked white corn meal, just to try it. I have used the yellow corn meal plenty of times for polenta and for coating the bottom of homemade pizza. So finally I was thinking of what to make for dinner on the way home from work and I thought of the white corn meal that I have been wanting to try. I could make a soft white polenta topped with a combination of ground beef cooked with cumin, cardamom, cayenne red pepper, onions, garlic, frozen peas and some diced canned tomato. I stopped off at the grocery store and got some 85% ground beef. I had never really looked at the package directions before for the white corn meal and I was about to ignor them and see what it would taste like just to cook it like a yellow corn meal quick polenta. But the directions seemed interestly easy and partially in another language. I gave it a shot and after simply mixing about equal amounts of warm water with the corn meal and a bit of salt it came together in seconds and I decided to just fry a few "french fry" shaped pieces in a little canola oil and see what happens. Well it was delicious. I happened to have some leftover homemade salad dressing, similar to Thousand Island, that we used as a dipping sauce and ate it as an appetizer, not bad!! So I decided to make 2 rounds of the corn meal dough, flattened to about 1/2 inch and fried them in a shallow pan until golden and crispy on both sides. I topped each one, slightly off center as to not ruin the crispy exterier. It was such a quick and delicious dinner, very satisfying.

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