Polenta Fritta

Polenta fritta exists because Italian home cooks waste nothing. You cook polenta for dinner, stirring it for an hour because that is what polenta demands. You make more than you need. The next day, you slice it, fry it, and discover that the leftovers surpass the original.

This is the cooking of Veneto, of Friuli, of Lombardia, where polenta was the bread of the poor for centuries. They ate it soft and steaming one day, then fried in whatever fat they had the next. The contrast of textures, crisp and crackling outside, soft and giving within, is the entire point. There is no sauce. There is no garnish. There is only the polenta, transformed by heat and fat.

Do not attempt this with instant polenta. Those granules lack the starch structure to set properly. They will crumble in the pan and mock your effort. Use proper coarse-ground polenta, cook it fully, chill it completely. Then, and only then, will it reward you.