Back in Melbourne before I left the book store I was working at was going out of business and I ended up buying an awesome soup book for dirt cheap. Ironically enough, it's an American book so the measurements are in cups and tablespoons instead of grams. So here it is.
Ingredients:
For the polenta cubes
1/2-2/3 cup or 100 gram cornmeal or instant polenta
2 cups water
1/2 tbsp salt
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp parme cheese
oil to fry
For the soup:
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
3 tbsp butter
20 oz/260 g canned corn kernels
2 cups low fat milk
salt and pepper
7 oz American cheese
scant 1/2 cup light cream
2 beefsteak tomatoes
1/2 bunch parsley, finely chopped
4 oz smoked salmon, to garnish
1. bring water to a boil and add half teaspoon of salt. Sprinkle the corn meal slowly into the water stirring consistently to prevent clumping. Lower heat, cover with lid and cook for about 40-45 minutes, stirring occasionally. add butter and parme cheese and stir. Pour polenta onto a cookie sheet to form a layer about 1/3 inch think. Smooth evenly and let cool until firm.
2. For the soup, peel the onion and garlic and finely chop. Fry the onion and garlic in butter. Drain the corn kernels and saute 2/3 of them with the onions and garlic. Pour in the milk and bring to a boil, then puree and strain through a fine mesh sieve. Season the soup with salt and pepper. Add the processed cheese and cream and simmer for about 10 minutes stirring occasionally.
3. Place the tomatoes in hot water for a few seconds then into cold water and peel. Cut the tomatoes into quarters, deseed and chop. Wash the parsley, shake dry, and finely chop. Cut the polenta into cubes and toast in a skillet until lightly browned.
4. Fry the chopped tomatoes with the remaining corn kernels in butter until warm. Stir in the chopped parsley.
5. Break apart the salmon into pieces and season with pepper.
6. Pour soup into 4 bowls. Add a few spoonfuls of the tomato-corn garnish followed by some diced polenta. Garnish with a few pieces of smoked salmon and serve hot with remaining polenta cubes on the side.
ALRIGHT:
I did things just a little different and have a few suggestions for this recipe. I'll start out by saying this dish turned out incredibly. I really like the taste of this soup and everything about it. Here's how I changed it or would change it up.
So Polenta. If anyone has ever worked with it I would say it's pretty inconsistent. I know it takes up more time to constantly be adding water and checking on it, but that's what I did instead of a set amount of water and just letting it go. I feel like you could compare it to rice. It could be perfectly fine without checking on it, or it could be a mess. I have an electric tea kettle, so I heat that guy up and add water as necessary. It took about 25 minutes to get the polenta soft. I don't usually add the butter when I cook polenta (it's really good just with eggs) but I do usually add the parme cheese, salt and pepper. But I added the butter this time, and spread out this is what it looked like.
Next, I recommend if you love to make soup like I do that you purchase a hand blender. I accidentally purchased one that doesn't have sharp blades, but for soups at this point it does the job since soup is all soft and mushy anyway. I don't have a fine mesh sieve so therefore I blended the soup and let it go. I know it's supposed to be without any lumps what so ever but I don't think it was that bad and didn't take away from the dish. Here's what it looked like right before I blended it...
So next. The tomatoes. A lot of people (I know it's a new thing for me) haven't ever skinned tomatoes. So here's the easiest way I've found. Make sure you have boiling water. Cut an X in the top of the tomato. Put it in boiling water for a minute then immediately into cold. The skin should be peeling back on its own and you shouldn't have to do much work to get the skin off (unless you have a difficult tomato). Also, make sure the water is boiling. That is key.
Also, I think next time I wouldn't add the butter to the polenta. When I tried to fry it, the polenta melted back into it's original form, not keeping it's shape as cubes. I'm not sure how they did that, but kudos to them. I'm gonna try it next time without the butter and see how it does.
I also didn't garnish with salmon. The dish came out pretty well, here is the final result.
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