Italian Polenta Casserole
photo by Julesong
- Ready In:
- 1hr 10mins
- Ingredients:
- 12
- Yields:
-
2 casseroles
- Serves:
- 8
ingredients
- 12 ounces bulk hot Italian sausage (or links removed from casings)
- 12 ounces lean ground beef
- 16 ounces chopped onions
- 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped (or more to taste)
- 1 (28 ounce) can whole tomatoes in puree
- 1 (1 lb) eggplant, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
- 4 cups water
- 1 3⁄4 cups chicken broth (1 14 to 14 1/2-ounce can)
- 1 1⁄2 cups cornmeal
- 1⁄2 teaspoon salt
- 3⁄4 cup freshly grated pecorino romano cheese or 3/4 cup parmesan cheese, plus
- freshly grated pecorino romano cheese (for topping) or 3/4 cup parmesan cheese (for topping)
directions
- In 5- to 6-quart Dutch oven, cook sausage and ground beef on medium-high 5 to 6 minutes or until browned, stirring and breaking up meat with side of spoon. With slotted spoon, transfer meat mixture to medium bowl.
- To same Dutch oven, add onion; cook on medium 8 to 10 minutes or until tender. Stir in garlic; cook 30 seconds. Add tomatoes with their puree; heat to boiling on high, breaking up tomatoes with side of spoon. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, 10 minutes. Add eggplant and meat; cover and cook 5 minutes on medium. Uncover and cook 10 minutes longer or until eggplant is tender, stirring occasionally.
- Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees F. In microwave-safe 4-quart bowl, with wire whisk, combine water, broth, cornmeal, and salt. Microwave on High 15 to 20 minutes or until cornmeal mixture is very thick. After first 5 minutes of cooking, whisk vigorously until smooth (mixture will be lumpy at first); whisk 2 more times during remaining cooking time. Remove from microwave, whisk in Romano.
- Spoon 2 cups hot polenta into each of two 1 1/2-quart shallow casseroles. Spread polenta over bottom and up sides of casseroles. Spoon filling over polenta. Spread remaining polenta around casserole edge to form a rim. Sprinkle with a couple tablespoons additional grated Romano, Parmesan, or Asiago.
- Bake one casserole 30 minutes or until hot. Let stand 10 minutes for easier serving. (Freeze the other one for later.).
- Makes 8 servings (in 2 casserole dishes).
- Note: if you want to lower the fat content, use turkey Italian sausage. Make sure to use quality sausage - I've used my favorite, our freshly made Merguez, and good sausage really makes a difference.
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Reviews
-
This recipe rated five stars with just a couple of adjustments to suit my taste. I added 4-5 TBS of tomato paste to the ragu, use 6 cloves of garlic, added some needed salt, and made the polenta with milk instead of water - a personal preference for the creamier texture. It is a great, filling, and fairly inexpensive dish. Thanks for sharing. I'd recommend a nice chianti with this dish.
Tweaks
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This recipe rated five stars with just a couple of adjustments to suit my taste. I added 4-5 TBS of tomato paste to the ragu, use 6 cloves of garlic, added some needed salt, and made the polenta with milk instead of water - a personal preference for the creamier texture. It is a great, filling, and fairly inexpensive dish. Thanks for sharing. I'd recommend a nice chianti with this dish.
RECIPE SUBMITTED BY
Julesong
Tukwila, 87
<p>It's simply this: I love to cook! :) <br /><br />I've been hanging out on the internet since the early days and have collected loads of recipes. I've tried to keep the best of them (and often the more unusual) and look forward to sharing them with you, here. <br /><br />I am proud to say that I have several family members who are also on RecipeZaar! <br /><br />My husband, here as <a href=http://www.recipezaar.com/member/39857>Steingrim</a>, is an excellent cook. He rarely uses recipes, though, so often after he's made dinner I sit down at the computer and talk him through how he made the dishes so that I can get it down on paper. Some of these recipes are in his account, some of them in mine - he rarely uses his account, though, so we'll probably usually post them to mine in the future. <br /><br />My sister <a href=http://www.recipezaar.com/member/65957>Cathy is here as cxstitcher</a> and <a href=http://www.recipezaar.com/member/62727>my mom is Juliesmom</a> - say hi to them, eh? <br /><br />Our <a href=http://www.recipezaar.com/member/379862>friend Darrell is here as Uncle Dobo</a>, too! I've been typing in his recipes for him and entering them on R'Zaar. We're hoping that his sisters will soon show up with their own accounts, as well. :) <br /><br />I collect cookbooks (to slow myself down I've limited myself to purchasing them at thrift stores, although I occasionally buy an especially good one at full price), and - yes, I admit it - I love FoodTV. My favorite chefs on the Food Network are Alton Brown, Rachel Ray, Mario Batali, and Giada De Laurentiis. I'm not fond over fakey, over-enthusiastic performance chefs... Emeril drives me up the wall. I appreciate honesty. Of non-celebrity chefs, I've gotta say that that the greatest influences on my cooking have been my mother, Julia Child, and my cooking instructor Chef Gabriel Claycamp at Seattle's Culinary Communion. <br /><br />In the last couple of years I've been typing up all the recipes my grandparents and my mother collected over the years, and am posting them here. Some of them are quite nostalgic and are higher in fat and processed ingredients than recipes I normally collect, but it's really neat to see the different kinds of foods they were interested in... to see them either typewritten oh-so-carefully by my grandfather, in my grandmother's spidery handwriting, or - in some cases - written by my mother years ago in fountain pen ink. It's like time travel. <br /><br />Cooking peeve: food/cooking snobbery. <br /><br />Regarding my black and white icon (which may or may not be the one I'm currently using): it the sea-dragon tattoo that is on the inside of my right ankle. It's also my personal logo.</p>