Recipe for Polenta with Eyes and Devil’s Sauce

There are several versions of polenta with eyes…

I discovered it while reading the collection by Giovanni Goria, a renowned Piedmontese gastronome. Historical collections, with a thousand nuances of daily life of the past, of the regional Piedmontese cuisine.

And some dishes resemble each other a bit, in Italy, the raw materials have always been similar across the various regions, the difference was in the condiments, certainly in Piedmont less oil was used, especially by farming families, because in the city other habits were added, precisely due to availability, oil was bought from nearby Liguria, and not everyone could have enough, lard was used much more often and oil for festive foods.

Cornmeal for making polenta, on the other hand, could be cultivated by many, and to make it tastier, they used the foods that were more common…

The pork rind at the time of the pig killing, some cotechino, prepared to use every part, to conserve and not waste anything.

The dried beans, shelled in the evening during “social” gatherings in the stables and cooked with these two “meats” to give an intense flavor to the condiment…On the wood stove, slowly…

And then the Devil’s Sauce or bagna du diau or d’l infern

I make the sauce like this: 2 onions, 3 garlic cloves, 3 anchovies, 1 tablespoon of capers, 1/2 bell pepper, and 1/2 celery stalk. A glass of tomato sauce, and half a glass of good red vinegar. I chop everything into pieces, sauté in a little oil, the vegetables, and the anchovy, then pour in the vinegar, let it evaporate and add the tomato, check the salt, half an hour and it’s ready.

Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Economical
Rest time: 12 Hours
Preparation time: 1 Hour
Portions: 6
Cooking methods: Slow Cooking, Stove
Cuisine: Italian
Seasonality: Autumn, Winter, and Spring

Ingredients

Polenta and beans and then the sauce, and then…

2.5 cups cornmeal
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 cups water
to taste salt
2.5 cups dried beans (borlotti)
1 cotechino (or 200g of pork rind)
1 onion (small)
2 tablespoons olive oil
to taste salt
2 onions
3 cloves garlic
3 salted anchovies
1 tablespoon salted capers (or vinegar)
Half bell pepper
Half celery (stalk)
1 glass tomato sauce
Half glass red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil

Tools

Pot for polenta, pot for beans, small pot for the sauce…Oven or pan for making the crostini.

Steps

If you are using dried beans, the evening before soak them in water with a teaspoon of baking soda…
In a small pan, sauté the small onion with a little oil and then add the beans, the cotechino, or the pork rind; cook without breaking the beans apart, adjust the salt. Meanwhile, prepare the polenta…Put the water with the oil and salt on the stove and as soon as it is warm, pour the flour, do not wait for it to boil, or it will be more difficult to remove any lumps, bring it to cooking. Consider that the beans take about two hours to cook; the polenta needs a little over an hour…
When the beans are cooked, drain them, if you like, do not discard the cooking broth, you can use it for a soup, shell the cotechino after removing the skin or cut the pork rind into small pieces…Pour everything into the polenta, let it flavor for about ten minutes and let it cool well…Plan to eat it in the evening!
When the polenta is cold, cut it into slices and brush with olive oil and a little salt, if you like, a sprinkle of black pepper too. Bake until it forms a crust; otherwise, fry, in which case no brushing with oil is needed.
While the crostini are cooking, prepare the Devil’s Sauce, cut all the vegetables into pieces and sauté in olive oil.
Add the vinegar and then the tomato; cook for about 15 minutes and blend, but not too finely. Your sauce is ready!
I added an alternative by preparing a fondue of Piedmontese toma cheese, I let the toma macerate in milk for about half an hour and then melted it on low heat, you can also do it in a bain-marie to avoid the risk of burning it.
When everything is ready, serve the hot polenta with its sauce and the fondue
It might seem like a heavy meal, but in truth, it is a healthy and tasty dish, a complete and harmonious dish
A winter evening with a good glass of wine and some laughter.