Menu: Polenta with Cheese, Peppers, Tomatoes and Basil

We now journey to the northwest corner of Italy, to the Piedmont region. Combined in a chapter with Liguria directly to the south, the two regions nonetheless seem to have notably different food traditions. Piedmont, historically part of the Kingdom of Savoy, is a region of mountains crisscrossed by fertile valleys. Like neighboring Lombardy, Piedmont is north of the olive-growing zone and has thus historically relied on the animal fats butter and lard. The Alpine pastures of the region have long produced a relative abundance of beef, veal, butter, and cow’s milk cheeses, including the fontina featured here.

Polenta is more common than pasta here, as in much of Northern Italy, and can be eaten in a variety of different ways. It can be poured out of the saucepan as is, or it can be cooled to firm up, sliced, and baked or fried, enhanced by any number of toppings. Here it is baked with a straightforward sauce of roasted red peppers and tomatoes, a liberal sprinkle of fontina cheese, then topped with chopped basil upon being removed from the oven. Aside from setting off the smoke alarm a few times roasting the peppers under the broiler (the skin has to get quite dark and blistered for the insides to soften properly), this was quite easy to prepare.

Admittedly, I found this menu a bit disappointing, which is a first for this project. I think a lot of it has to do with personal taste. The flavors were not bad by any means, but seemed a little bland and uninteresting. The sauce seemed like it needed something, maybe some garlic and/or herbs, and the creamy but mild fontina would have been enhanced by a bit of parmesan. Then there’s the fact that polenta is essentially grits, which are not my favorite. That’s not to say there aren’t good things going on in this one-dish meal. It all comes down to personal taste.