Mountains and Polenta

Hello everyone, lovers or less of Italian cuisine. We decided to open a blog dedicated to Italy in general, obviously with particular importance dedicated to the culinary aspects of our country, to help us in our mission to bring to America not only the foods and drinks really linked to the Italian tradition but above all our culture, our landscapes and all that the ancient land of the Romans has to offer. I think that to better communicate something that thing must be experienced in the first person so as to leave the narrator all the informations necessary to create a direct bridge between the reader and the topic of the story, whatever it is. I would like to inaugurate this blog by telling you about a magical area located in the north-east of our country, the Dolomite mountains of Cadore, which represented for me the backdrop of numerous summers of my youth and one of the most beautiful places I have seen in my life. The Cadore is a mountainous area of the Alpine chain rich in waterways, spectacular landscapes and a population that has maintained its characteristics and morals over the centuries. It is common to see in this area a cadorino (term indicating a inhabitant of Cadore in italian language) dressed with traditional clothes or maybe an ibex crossing the street, g but also elderly people do trakking on steep mountains or cook a plate of cadorina traction as well as one of their ancestors would have cooked hundreds of years ago.

Vigo di Cadore standing against the background of the Dolomites

I'd like to talk to you about a typical dish of Cadore's cuisine, a dish that I'm very fond of and that has accompanied me the most beautiful moments of my life: the "polenta cadorina". Polenta is an archaic dish, one of the first cooked dough of humanity. It was certainly in use already among the Sumerians in Mesopotamia where it was prepared with millet and rye. The Greeks will use barley flour and there are endless variations depending on the materials available in both Africa and Asia. The classic version is prepared by cooking coarse grain flour in boiling salted water. The term polenta derives from the Latin Puls and in the Republican era it was such a common food that it gave the Romans the name "pultiferi", that is, potato-eaters. At the time it was a mixture based on grinding spelled cooked in water and sold, served with a side of chickpeas, salted minnows (gerres or maenae), fruit, cheese, cooked vegetables and sometimes meat. Similarly, a polenta made with dried broad beans is used in Puglia today, with which cooked vegetables are served. Today it is only thanks to America, discovered by an Italian over 500 years ago, if we can taste the most famous and widespread variety of polenta, that of corn. Discovered from Christopher Columbus in the Americas, the corn spread rapidly throughout Europe, then in Africa, the Middle East, India and China; a very profitable crop, even if it requires strong quantities of nitrogen, which can be obtained naturally from the poultry house. Corn (which is very ductile and from which products such as fructose also derive) is one of the most widespread cultivations in the world and is also one of the most present components (about 80%) in food products on supermarket shelves. The yellow-colored flours correspond to 3 types: "bramata" (the most classic, rustic, stone-ground, ideal for the preparation of polenta); "fioretto" (finer, is also used to prepare rice or corn pasta, to bread meats and fish, in the dough of corn bread or some desserts); and "fumetto", a very fine flour obtained from the processing of corn on cylinder plants. The white polenta flour derives from the milling of maize corn, a more precious variety, with a more delicate tone, and it covers less the flavor of the sauces that accompany it; it is strictly used in Polesine and in the Triveneto area. The recipe of polenta provides that the mixture is thrown into a pot, possibly of copper, full of salted boiling water, in a ratio of 1: 4. You must stir continuously with a wooden stick (called "cannella") for about an hour. When the polenta is cooked, pour it on a wooden board and dress it with the most appropriate sauce, serving a second of its consistency with a spoon or sliced.

Polenta in the typical copper cauldron

Cold can be fried, sautéed in the oven with sauces and gravies or used as bread. I can personally confirm that there are many ways to eat polenta, with wild boar or roe deer, with fish with cheese but in my opinion the thing that makes it really special to eat polenta is to spoil it where its roots are deeper: in Cadore. I assure you that eating a steaming dish of polenta with venison sauce in a mountain lodge with a view of the most beautiful peaks in the world is priceless, or at least it is quite low compared to what you can live! Of course, if we think that polenta was a century ago a poor dish typical of the farmers and shepherds of our northern mountain lands you may be surprised to see that in many Italian restaurants polenta is now considered an elite food, like ratatouille in France or the land paella in Spain. Just to avoid it I post you below some restaurant or chalet of the dolomites of the Cadore where eating polenta is still an indescribable experience to be tried. Guaranteed by a tireless lover of Cadore.