What I had for dinner:

Polenta and Sausage

27 May 1994 08:37:39 -0400

The slow cooker turned out great for polenta. Polenta is one of that annoying Italian trio (with risotto and tomato sauce) that classically requires constant stirring for obnoxiously long periods. The moderate heat of the slow cooker is just right to prevent scorching without any supervision. Hurray for technology!

I put 1 cup of cornmeal in the slow cooker with 2 bay leaves, some cumin (ground) and caraway seeds (whole). (Goya harina de maiz grueza is best, at 95 cents a pound. Or one can use imported Italian polenta at $5 a pound, but why bother?) Four cups of boiling water were added all at once with stirring, and the cooker was started on its lowest "cook" setting (barely simmering).

Separately, I rendered a couple of hardpacked sausages (andouille, chorizo, linguiça, sopressata are all variations on the same theme) to get rid of as much fat as possible. The sausages were then cut in thick slices and placed on the polenta. The whole thing was left to cook until morning, then switched off.

For dinner, it was reheated in the cooker, and meanwhile I made a plum and ginger sauce. 4 large plums, stoned, were cooked in water until soft. Half an onion, and an inch of ginger chopped into tiny bits were browned in a little olive oil, the plums were added through a sieve (the pulp, but not the skin pushed through with the back of a spoon), and cooked a bit until thick (careful not to let it scorch when it gets thick enough).

That made enough leftovers for a couple of lunches as well.