Burgers and other fast food have new competition from this week in the form of one of Italy’s oldest foods: polenta, the staple food of the Roman legions, who preferred it to bread, and of Northern Italians for centuries, has undergone a transformation from slow food – for it takes at least an hour to cook it in the traditional way – into takeaway food.
It is all the brainwave of Paolo Prandini, the owner of the La Mangiono pizzeria in Rovereto [Trentino]. Mr Prandini told a local newspaper that people who are preparing sausages or rabbit at home can now come to him for the right accompaniment and, because the polenta is packed in special thermal containers, they can be assured that it will retain its heat and aroma.
This is not the first makeover that polenta has had, for it became fashionable outside Italy during the 1980s, with many smart restaurants charging extortionate prices for a portion. However, Northern Italians did not always enjoy it with the luxury of meat and rich sauces; before the 1960s often all they could afford to add to it was a salted anchovy, some garlic or a little oil.
Mr Prandini’s polenta is made from farina di Storo – corn which grows on the Storo plain - the “oro di Storo or “Storo gold” and this produces a particularly thick mixture. The fact that local ingredients are used adds to the healthy properties of this food. His polenta is cooked in a special copper machine which is a mechanical version of the traditional paiolo [an enormous copper pot which was hung over the fire]. And the recipe? Della nonna [grandmother’s] of course!
