Polenta (Mamaliga)

If you've never had polenta, you should try it at least once.  Polenta or mamaliga as it's called in Romania, it's traditionally a peasant food and it's a substitute for bread.  Polenta is really easy to make, only 3 ingredients, and it's traditionally made in a cast iron pot called tuci.  I learned how to make this from my mother and honestly, as a child I never thought I'd actually ever make this.  But as you know things change as you grow up and you start craving the traditional foods you've grown up with, so one day I found myself calling my mother and asked her how to make it.  Here are the 3 ingredients you'll need:

• 1 cup of yellow cornmeal
• 3 to 4 cups of water
• 1 tsp salt

If you don't have a cast iron pot you can really use any pot you have but you have to be careful as you're cooking this.  You will need a wooden spoon for this.  So put all ingredients in a pot and on medium heat start stirring the polenta.  As the cornmeal it will thicken.  You can continue stirring this until it's done with the wooden spoon, just be careful and turn down the heat otherwise it's going to splash all over.  You may also cover the pot with a lid and cook it on medium heat for about 10 minutes.  

Now as I said you can just eat it as a substitute for bread along with a nice beef stew, but one recipe that I love is with feta cheese and bacon.  Basically you have to layer to polenta while it's hot, in a bowl, so you'd take some polenta and layer it using a bit of oil, to make it easier to layer, then add some grated feta cheese, then crumbled bacon, and then repeat with polenta.  After you're done the layering, you can put it in the microwave for about 5 minutes to melt the feta cheese, and let me tell you, it's unbelievable. Simply delicious.  Enjoy!

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