Baked savory polenta pastries are delicious, tasty, and very easy to prepare. We can serve them among the appetizers for holiday festivities, personalize and diversify them as we like. This recipe, which does not contain gluten, allows us to enjoy polenta in a different way and offer our guests tantalizing and always new dishes, using few ingredients. They are very practical because they can be prepared even a day in advance and stored in a closed box. I constantly personalize them, using ingredients I already have at home, and they are always a success. Additionally, we can decorate them with almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, like their sweet “cousins” they are inspired by.
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Very cheap
- Rest time: 2 Hours
- Preparation time: 30 Minutes
- Portions: 45
- Cooking methods: Oven, Stove
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Autumn, Winter, and Spring, New Year's
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup fioretto cornmeal
- 1 3/4 cups water
- to taste coarse salt
- to taste nutmeg
- 1 medium whole egg
- 2 tablespoons grated table cheese
- to taste freshly ground pepper
- to taste chopped chives and parsley
- 5 sun-dried tomatoes
- 1 tablespoon toasted hazelnut granules
- 4 slices speck or prosciutto (optional)
Steps
This recipe can also be made with leftover polenta, in the amount of about 1 lb.
The number of savory polenta pastries might vary depending on the size we give them. Generally, I can obtain about 45 pastries each weighing between 1/4 and 1/3 oz when cooked.
Prepare it with 3/4 cup of fioretto cornmeal and 1 3/4 cups of water, adding a pinch of coarse salt (the polenta should not be too salty) as we are already used to doing, remembering, however, that it must be very firm. After cooking, let it cool and firm up in a bowl.
Meanwhile, boil the sun-dried tomatoes in boiling water for 10 minutes, to make them soft and pleasant to the palate; then, after draining them of excess water, chop them coarsely. We can add them directly to the polenta mixture or after forming the pastries.
Finely chopped chives and parsley can also be added inside the mixture or, alternatively, after baking the pastries, as decoration.
When the polenta is cold, break it up with a fork and mix it with the nutmeg, egg, grated cheese, a pinch of ground pepper, another pinch of fine salt, until you get a uniform mixture.
The prosciutto (or speck) can be added to the mixture to enrich it further, after chopping it very, very finely.
To create the savory pastries, we can use two teaspoons or a pastry bag.
Preheat the oven to 392°F, line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and start forming the pastries, giving them shapes and sizes as desired.
To keep the parchment paper in place while forming the savory polenta pastries, just moisten the baking sheet with a little water and lay the parchment paper on top.
Once the savory pastries are formed, we can decorate them on the surface with hazelnut granules and chopped sun-dried tomatoes to make them even more decorative, but, above all, enticing, thanks to the crunchy note they will add to this preparation.
Bake them on the lowest rack for about 15 minutes in the preheated oven. Then, broil them for a moment for perfect browning. That’s it; easy and also quite quick.
After baking, remove and let cool our baked savory polenta pastries. We can store them in a well-closed box.
Bon appetit
