This is my version of a flourless orange cake which I love to eat. It’s based on a classic Italian whole orange cake that is traditionally flourless (and gluten-free), relying on eggs to bind it, and whole oranges (pick seedless varieties) boiled in water until soft, then puréed. Polenta (cornmeal) lends a beautiful golden colour and the cake utilises a whole orange to provide a wholesome orange flavour! The skin contains a huge amount of aromatic oils that impart their beautiful citrus flavour and a hint of bitterness, and the pithy skin contains large amounts of fibre and pectins. Use a gluten-free baking powder to keep it gluten-free.
When I started dating my now husband, I didn’t cook him anything for like three months besides scrambled eggs and some toast. And so one day I was like, I really like him. I'm gonna show him that I like him and I decided to make him shrimp and grits and collard greens. This recipe for grits is simple and perfect when you want to have good, deeply savory grit. And please, I'm not even wading into the savory versus sweet grit conversation.
The magical land of Bucovina, in northern Moldavia, is well known for its outstanding dairy farms and produce. Thick, unctuous smântână and brânză, crème fraîche and curd cheese are used generously in many recipes. This cake is a happy marriage between dairy and another staple ingredient in the region: cornmeal (polenta). It is traditionally made in two versions: one savoury and one sweet, and some recipes add various amounts of flour, oil and bicarbonate of soda (baking soda). While it is common in Moldavia to mix cornmeal with flour, I have deliberately returned to a basic, gluten-free recipe here.
If you have spent some time in Venice, you may have noticed yellow, often
log-shaped, biscuits called zaleti in pastry shop windows. As the towns along
the west coast of Istria were part of the Republic of Venice for some 500 years,
the foods were heavily influenced by those of Venice.
"Tamal en cazuela is our ultimate comfort food," insists Acela Matamoros, one of Cuba's top cooking teachers and food historians. A kind of Cuban polenta -- or a stove-top tamal -- at its most basic, tamal en cazuela can be just a soft mush of water, cornmeal, and salt, sometimes eaten with milk and a sprinkle of sugar. Other versions use grated corn or the strained "milk" of the corn puree, which thickens when cooked. The flavorings range from classic pork, such as here, to chicken to seafood. This recipe, using pork ribs and a combination of grated corn and some cornmeal to thicken it, is easy and fairly quick but delivers plenty of that comforting, grandmotherly flavor.
Polenta: 15 minutes prep; 90 minutes unattended stove time
Grilled Greens: 15 minutes prep; about 10 minutes stove time