Chili & Egg Polenta

Crispy fried polenta cakes topped with home-made chili and a fried egg. What's not to like? Use the suggested chili recipe or your own favorite. Great use of leftover chili and polenta.

Turkey chili

1 1/2 lbs ground turkey
1/2 large onion, diced
6 cloves garlic, chopped fine
3 tbs chili powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp cumin
1 bay leaf
2 15 oz cans diced tomato
1 15 oz can kidney beans, rinced and drained
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt/pepper

Heat oil in dutch oven, saute onions and garlic. Cook turkey until cooked through and add tomatoes including the canning juice and a cup of water. Add spices. Simmer for about a hour and add the kidney beans. Salt and pepper and adjust spices to taste.

Polenta

1 cup polenta or coarse ground cornmeal or grits
3 cups water
1 1/2 tbs water
1 cup grated parmesan

Boil water and slowly add polenta while stirring. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occassionally to keep the polenta from sticking or clumping. Stir in butter and cheese and spoon and level into a cassarole dish. Refrigerate over-night to firm up the polenta.

Cut the polenta into any shape you like and fry with a little butter on medium heat until crispy. Top with a fried egg, a couple spoonfuls of chili, a small sprinkling of grated cheddar and diced green onion.

The pomegranate seeds as garnish are optional of course.

Grits

Grits are basically cornmeal. Yellow, white, medium grind, course grind, instant, quick and hominey. All can be made into grits.

Grits in the South mostly refers to white or hominey grits.

You've got your yellow, made from yellow corn, white from white corn and hominey which is made by a process using yellow corn and lye which turns it white. You can make good grits out of any type of medium to course stone grind cornmeal. Mostly the difference is slapping a label that says "GRITS" on cornmeal.

The quick and instant types are processed to reduce cooking time. I'd avoid those. Go with real stone ground grits. It's not like the real stuff takes any time or special effort anyway. Grits are on the plate in about 10 minutes using real unprocessed stoneground grits.

It all really comes down to personal preferrence. Me? I'm not a big fan of lye or other stuff you use to unclog toilets in my food, so I went with this yellow corn grit variety. The only real difference between grits and polenta is method of cooking and ingredients. If you really are concerned about color you can track down white corn varieties but yellow grits don't bother me. It's all cornmeal. You could make grits out of standard shelf cornmeal. The only difference really would be in texture since most stuff labeled cornmeal is a finer grind than what's labeled grits.

The cooking? Nothing could be simpler.

Basic Grits:
1.5 cups water
A couple pinches of salt.
.5 cup stone ground grits.
Tbsp butter

Bring the water to a boil in a lidded saucepan. Add the salt. Reduce heat to medium and slowly stir in the grits. Stir the grits constantly for 5 minutes, remove from heat , stir in the butter, put the lid on, and let sit for 5 more minutes while you fix the rest of your b-fast.

Fluff it up and serve. If you prefer it runnier, add more moisture. You can also use milk for a creamer version.

This is all really going to come down to personal preferrence and what your own experience is. I imagine that many people just are fine with Quaker Oats Quick Grits or that's what Mom used to make, so that's "grits" to them. And that's fine. But it's all just cornmeal folks and there's alot of different ways to cook 'em up and types.

There's no such thing as "true grits" really.

Polenta Egg Parmigiano

This dish evolved from the union of an open-faced fried egg sandwich with tomato breakfast, one close-to-expiring tube of polenta, and some onion that I discovered in a fridge clean-out session.


If you don't have polenta, this would work great with a nice artisan bread or even english muffin. Alternately, poaching the egg, instead of frying, makes a more delicate version but I found I prefer the firmness of the fried egg over the softness of the poached.

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp butter
4 Polenta cakes, 1/2 in. sliced
1/8 Medium sweet onion slices, cut into half rings
1 Medium tomato, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
2 eggs
Dash of oregano
Salt & Pepper
Parmigiano-Reggiano

Fry the 4 polenta cakes in the olive oil and butter in a medium skillet on medium high heat until nicely browned. Remove and set aside to drain on paper towel. Saute the onion in the remaining oil and butter until starting to caramelize and add the tomato, garlic, oregano and a dash of salt and pepper. Saute for a minute or so. Reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally.

In a non-stick skillet fry the eggs to individual preferrence (I like over medium myself).

To plate, place two polenta cakes per plate, slightly overlapping. Lay the fried egg on top of the polenta and top with the tomato sauce. Using a vegetable peeler, garnish with thin slices of Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Serves 2