csrule Food Journal

There’s sweet (cookies, cakes, pies) and there’s savory (meats, soups, seafood) and normally the twain don’t meet. But occasionally the categories do switch up, and you’ll encounter some black pepper biscotti or gorgonzola cheesecake or chicken pot pie. Some brown sugar bacon or blueberry yogurt soup or sugarcane shrimp and the sweet becomes savory and the savory sweet.

Sometimes these experiments succeed wildly and sometimes they’re abject failures, but they all force us to sit up and take notice. Ultimately, such creativity’s a good thing lest we fall into a culinary rut of gray meats and soft white starches.

But I tend to avoid wholesale experimentation when I cook. I like to begin with something basic and familiar and apply a subtle tweak or creative spin rather than go off on a dramatic tangent. So you won’t find me rubbing coffee on my salmon or infusing vanilla into meatballs, though some newfangled flavor combinations that really do work (caramels with fleur de sel, for example) were probably discovered in just this way.

One place where I will take some liberties is breakfast. I’m not sure why. Maybe because the meal is relatively small. Quantities are limited, ingredients inexpensive, and unless you’re making blintzes or grinding your own pork sausages a good breakfast is generally only 10 minutes away, making the time investment minimal as well.

Recently I came across a bag of polenta in the freezer. I store it there because I use it so rarely, and at some point I must have gotten nervous about it going bad which, in retrospect, seems a bit silly. But the polenta was there, the house was chilly, and I needed a morning meal. There seemed absolutely no good reason why, if I could cook oats and rice and wheat farina, for god’s sake, in milk, and call all of those things breakfast, that I couldn’t do the same thing with that polenta.

And so I did.

And it was good.

…
Milk and Honey Breakfast Polenta with Pine Nuts and Currants

If you love oatmeal and porridgey cereals when the weather’s cold, here’s another simple option. Toasting the pine nuts in a dry skillet releases their oils and adds to their buttery flavor.

Makes 2 servings

2 cups milk
½ cup dry polenta (coarse cornmeal)
Pinch kosher salt
Honey, toasted pine nuts, currants, and additional milk, for serving

In a medium saucepan, bring milk to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. Slowly stream in the polenta, stirring constantly for 2 minutes. Turn the heat down as low as possible, and continue cooking, stirring frequently, for about 3 minutes longer, or until the polenta absorbs most of the milk and thickens.

Divide between 2 bowls. Drizzle with honey and sprinkle with toasted pine nuts and currants, adding a bit of cold milk to loosen the porridge, if desired.