I hate long recipe backgrounds as much as the next person, but this recipe was a long time in development. I was living in Santa Cruz from 2004-2010, and one of the local restaurants (Chocolate) had an amazing chicken mole dish served with polenta pie. I’m pretty finicky when it comes to polenta, and I just loved this dish. I really wanted to try to replicate it at home, but sadly all of my attempts were hot garbage. Pastry I can do, but the filling always turned into a hard, crusty mess of polenta instead of a soft, velvety filling. Since then, I’ve made polenta at home several times through the years, and while it’s good as polenta, it never struck me as good for polenta pie.
Welcome to 2020 when we are all living in a COVID cesspit, and I finally whipped out some recipe books that I had on standby for the exact moment the world comes to an end. I pulled out my Offal Good cookbook by Chris Cosentino and decided on the beef liver. He recommend his creamy polenta recipe on the side. The polenta was brilliant, and probably the best creamy polenta I’ve ever had the pleasure of making at home. Then I had flashbacks to that polenta pie recipe that had been my white whale for oh-so-many years, and I knew it would work perfectly to adapt. So, with that hopefully quite short introduction, welcome to my polenta pie. (I’ve always had a promise that recipe posted shouldn’t just be me making someone else’s recipe, but I think this is adapted enough to make it worthwhile.) Also, while my recipe adds green chile to the filling, this would be absolutely amazing with other fillings like crumbled Italian sausage, so if you try it out and like it, please feel free to go wild and let me know in the comments if you try any other fillings you would recommend!
Polenta Pie
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup coarse-ground polenta
- 1 cup whole milk (plus more as needed)
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter
- 1/4 cup marscapone cheese
- 1/2 cup grated hard cheese (I prefer very mature cheddar, but Parmesan is good too)
- Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper
- 2 eggs
- 1 can diced hatch green chile
- 1 pie crust (Use your favorite pie crust recipe or shop bought is a-okay)
Par-bake your pie crust:
Preheat your oven to 375F. Line your pastry crust with parchment paper and baking beads, beans, or whatever you like to use to weigh it down. Bake your crust for about 15 minutes, remove the paper with the weights and bake for 5 minutes more. Take out to cool while you make the filling. (Or just par-bake your crust however you like to do it, I’m not going to yell at you for using your own tried and tested method.)
Prepare the polenta:
(These ingredients are for a half recipe of the creamy polenta, but if you want more polenta to eat, or to make a second pie, feel free to double everything! Creamy Polenta recipe from Offal Good by Chris Cosentino)
In a heavy-bottomed pot, combine the polenta and 2 1/2 cups cold water. Bring this to a simmer, slowly, over medium heat, constantly whisking the polenta so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot. Once the water has been absorbed, feed the milk into the polenta 1/2 cup at a time, and let it absorb completely before adding more. Cook at a gentle simmer for about 45 minutes, until the polenta gains a creamy consistency.
Add the butter, in pieces, and marscapone and cook for 15 minutes more, whisking often, then add the hard cheese. Remove from the heat. Taste and adjust seasoning to your liking with salt and pepper. (I recommend slightly over-seasoning as the eggs in the filling mellow it out a tiny bit.) If the polenta gets too thick, adjust the consistency.
Prepare the filling:
Just in case you turned your oven off after you baked the pie crust (I would if I had to spend over an hour making polenta for the pie filling), preheat your oven to 375F. Take your two eggs and whisk them together. Slowly add spoonfuls of the polenta to your eggs and mix well to temper the eggs and prevent them from cooking. Add more polenta and mix. Repeat until all the polenta is mixed into the eggs. Add your can of green chile to the filling and mix it in. (This would be the time to add any other filling you think may be good as well!) Pour the filling into the pie crust and bake in the oven for 30 minutes. When you pull it out, the filling should be still slightly wobbly, puffed up with a few brown spots and there is likely to be a crack; this is all normal. Set aside to cool. (This is very important as it gives the filling time to set up after being baked.)
Cut and enjoy! Like I mentioned before, the restaurant I had it at served it with chicken mole, but this would be good with meatloaf or fish or just a bunch of veggies. I’m not going to tell you how to enjoy it, just do!
