Polenta Taragna Deconstruction

“Polenta Taragna”

Polenta as a dish is a descendant of “puls,” a dish popular during the Roman empire, consisting of farro, millet, or some other form of grain cooked down in water.  Corn as a species originated in the new world, making its way back to northern Italy in the 1600’s via the wealthy city-states’ access to overseas trade routes.  Polenta is only truly a part of northern Italian cuisine, and not southern, due to that Renaissance era wealth.  “Taragna” meanwhile, is etymologically related to the word “tarai,” the name for the wooden paddle used in the Valtellina (Lombardy) to stir the polenta in a large copper pot.  We add buckwheat to our corn polenta because they do so in the Valtellina as well: though they started growing corn and adopted milled corn into their diets, the Lombards maintained a taste for the ancient puls and married the two to form polenta taragna.

Our Grains: Anson Mills

Anson Mills was founded in 1998 by Glen Roberts in Columbia, South Carolina.  Roberts began as a farmer who sought to preserve the fabled yet disappearing Carolina Gold rice breed, a native species that is prized for its unique flavor.  He developed an interest in other native grains, and heard a rumor of an almost extinct Carolina White Mill Corn.  He spent 2 years searching for seed, eventually finding it in the fields of a bootlegger who used it to make his moonshine.  This same style of corn is traditionally picked in the field after the first snow and milled immediately.  Milling grains generates a lot of heat, and if the corn was at room temperature and not naturally frozen by the weather, the delicate flavor would be damaged as the heat from the milling process cooked the grains.  Anson Mills has adopted a cold milling process as a nod to this practical tradition: after harvest, the corn is frozen and then milled to prevent cooking and flavor degradation.  Since 2000, Roberts has traveled all over the world, collecting heirloom grain to grow and mill to make Anson Mills’ prized flours, while simultaneously promoting the continued planting of heirloom varieties in commercial agriculture.

Our polenta is made of an Italian corn and a Japanese buckwheat.  We cook our polenta in lightly salted water, adding in just a little bit of butter and parmesan cheese to emphasize the flavor of the corn.

The Veg

Our mushrooms are foraged locally by a gentleman named Tyler.  He brings us whatever he finds, so we really can’t guarantee precisely what species of mushrooms will be in the dish at any given time.  We roast the mushrooms and then make a reduced mushroom stock out of them to create a sauce for the dish.

The cippolini onions are roasted whole, skins on, until the outer layers blacken and char.  We then peel off all of the blackened layers, so you get that super sweet caramelization and a little bit of smokiness without the char overwhelming the dish.  Brussels are also roasted whole.  The mushrooms, cippolinis, and sprouts are all dressed in the mushroom stock sauce and topped with a gremolata.

Gremolata is essentially a dry pesto.  It always consists of a citrus zest, garlic, and herbs, without any oil.

That Egg.

Slow poached eggs were discovered (developed?) by Andoni Aduriz, chef/owner of Mugaritz.  He spent two years researching the cooking method of eggs at different temperatures and lengths of time, looking for the perfect consistency.  He discovered that there are 13 different proteins in an egg, all of which respond to heat differently and are divided heterogeneously between the yolk and the white.  He wanted to find the ideal temperature for ALL of the proteins, not just those found in the yolk or those found in the whites.  If you hold an egg at an even 60-65 degrees for 45-60 minutes, you end up with that perfect set yet soft texture in both the yolk and the white.  On a side note, food scientist Cesar Vega found that eggs held for 2 hours or more develop a fudgy texture, eventually moving toward a slowly gelling reaction.  Time matters.

Maintaining constant temperature for an extended period of time is difficult to impossible with a traditional pot of water on the stove.  Most people will use an immersion circulator: a heating column that is placed in a water bath and circulates water around the bath, to keep it moving and heated to a uniform temperature.  Most people associate circulators with sous vide, giving rise to the misnomer of the “sous vide egg.”  We are not serving a sous vide egg.  That is actually impossible, because to sous vide involves cooking at an even temperature inside a vacuum-sealed bag.  Just think about what would happen if you put an egg in a vacuum.  You’re definitely not getting a separated yolk and egg.  

To make our slow poached egg, we use the combi.  We place the eggs inside, fill it with steam, and set the temperature and a timer.  What comes out is a thing of beauty: modernist techniques used to perfectly attain something that feels both familiar and comforting.

Taleggio

Taleggio is a cheese named for the Taleggio valley in Lombardy, where the style originated sometime in the 9th century.  It has a certified DOP (designation of origin protection).  The cheese itself is made from either raw or pasteurized cow’s milk, acidified to curdle (a fairly unique cheesemaking choice), and aged on wood in caves for 6-10 weeks.  The rind is washed once per week in sea water.  The cheese is marked by a strong smell, but substantially more mild taste.  It is traditionally made in the fall and winter only.  The dish is therefore finished with a traditional, northern Italian cheese just shaved over the top of the same region’s style of polenta.