Shrimp & White Bean Confit with Polenta

Sometimes recipes stir me to make something else entirely with them. I was intrigued by a recipe for a fava bean stew, but then I thought of the shrimp we had in the freezer, considered cannellini beans, and wondered how it might all go on top of creamy polenta.

I made the Cyprus fava bean stew, known as Koukkia Kounnes, from Saveur magazine, but tinkered with the recipe (see below,) using a 15.5 oz. can of white cannellini beans instead of favas and used about half the amount of suggested chicken broth. I let it simmer for quite a while, along with the garlic, thyme, onion, and bay leaves, until the liquid all but evaporated--now I had a luscious, fragrant confit of beans!

While the stew slowly simmered, I prepared the polenta. When the polenta was nearly done cooking, I sauteed a dozen thawed shrimp in olive oil with zest from a whole lemon, some smashed garlic, salt and pepper. Once the shrimp were cooked, I removed them with a slotted spoon and covered with foil to keep warm. Reduce the zesty sauce to thicken slightly.

The perfect forkful: spoon your polenta on two plates, and add the confit of beans. Top with shrimp and pour the reduced sauce over that. Get a hold of that fork and dig in! Serves two.

I went rogue in the kitchen, but here is complete stew recipe unadorned, with my suggestions only in italics:

KOUKKIA KOUNNES (FAVA BEAN STEW WITH GARLIC, THYME, & BAY LEAVES)

Adapted from Saveur
Serves 4-6

1 lb. dried fava beans (I used canned cannellini beans)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more, to taste
6 cloves garlic, quartered
1 large yellow onion, roughly chopped
5 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
5 cups chicken broth or vegetable broth (I used only about 2 cups)
2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice (I forgot! But lemon zest with the shrimp preparation solved that!)

Place the dried fava beans in a bowl or pot, cover with water by 3″ and let soak for 8 hours or overnight in the refrigerator.  Drain the beans and set aside. (Use canned for time-saving tip!)

Heat a dutch oven over medium heat, and add the oil.  Add the onion, garlic, thyme, and bay, and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and lightly browned, about 15 minutes.

Add the fava beans (or cannellinis) and broth to the pot. Bring to a boil over high heat and then reduce the heat to a simmer. Simmer, partially covered, until beans are tender and broth has thickened, about 2.5 hours. (Canned beans won’t take this long to cook; simmer until liquid is almost evaporated)

Season with salt and pepper and stir in the lemon juice (again, I forgot the lemon juice). Ladle into a bowl and drizzle more olive oil over the top, if desired. (Or serve on top of your polenta with shrimp!)

Thanks to ellysaysopa.com for adapting the recipe online. 

From Popcorn to Polenta

In need of polenta, but fresh out? Do you perhaps have some popcorn? Throw it in a blender! At a high speed, the blender (a Vitamix fitted with a dry-grain container is ideal) will grind the popcorn to a coarse cornmeal powder--exactly what you need to make your polenta dish. A cup of ground polenta will serve at least four people once prepared. Follow this link for 'perfect polenta' of your own, courtesy of allrecipes.com. A little salt, butter, cheese and several cups of water on the boil are the basic ingredients for a creamy side dish, but certainly tailor your polenta to your taste. If you have never tasted or made polenta before, it's a must try!

A note: The polenta may take longer to cook than the suggested time and may need more water to acheive the perfect consistency, so plan accordingly.




Thanks to Karen Haggenmaker at allrecipes.com for the silky, satisfying polenta photo!

Chicken Livers For Dinner

Sometimes dinner can be a wonderfully simple thing--it's more often the organization of the guests that is difficult as we'd been trying to wrangle our fellow chicken liver lovers for this evening for at least a year. Well, all came together a few days ago in the most excellent way. I've held on to these recipe cards, clipped from an issue of Martha Stewart's Living magazine back in 2001, always intending to assemble this clever menu, but never did. With a little tinkering, boy was it all good! Baby and I added cheeses from Artisanal to get us started, a few bottles of Viognier and another white, slightly frizzante something or other to see us through the entire course of the meal.

Here's what we ate:

Some Artisanal Cheeses
Robiola Rocchetta: cow, sheep, goat, a welcome guest at any party
La Peral: cow--pungent, like a bleu, enhanced by a drizzle of black truffle honey
La Tur: Cow, Sheep, Goat--the ice cream of cheeses! We're really dealing with 3 cheeses in 1 here: the savory rind, the gooey under belly and the stiff cream in the middle. Absolutely gorgeous!

A chicory Salad with lemon anchovy vinaigrette further sent the ball rolling but cut the suggested amount of lemon juice in half, and double the anchovies at least (and by all means use fresh white anchovies if you can), or use anchovy paste and definitely add some sugar to taste. Also, I didn't know that escarole and radicchio were considered chicories--and our market was out of escarole so I subbed slightly bitter red leaf lettuce for escarole.

We soaked our Chicken Livers in buttermilk to remove the bitterness and finished them in a 100 degree oven before our guests arrived. I don't know that I've ever been so prepared for a dinner before anybody's even showed up! We made the Polenta with bacon and sage ahead of time too, as a luscious pillow on which our main dish would rest.

More cheese! Roasted Pears with carmelized sugar and brandy called for thick slices of Pecorino Romano but we opted for a Majorero Pimenton goat cheese to add a little spice to our dessert instead.

What an enjoyable evening we had!

Soundtrack: Dinah Washington, the Dinah Washington Story, disc 2; Charles Mingus, Mingus Three; Bird, The Original Recordings of Charlie Parker; Atlantic Jazz, Best of the '50s; The Dave Brubeck Quartet, Time Out