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Stoneground polenta

With all the icy-cold evenings we've been having recently, polenta - the northern Italian cornmeal porridge - is appearing frequently on the dinner table at home. Actually I'm lying: it's appearing frequently on the sofa in front of the television.

Although I love polenta, I'm never surprised when people tell me they don't like it because usually all they've had is the instant stuff. Organic stoneground polenta is something else, like the difference between 'instant oat-based cereal' and Traditional Scottish porridge made with proper oatmeal, or white sliced bread and a great rye sourdough, or instant coffee and hand-roasted varieties. Stoneground polenta smells sweetly and strongly of corn, and has a softly uneven texture that constantly reminds you it's simply ground corn kernels. Even my husband can tell the difference.

I buy both white and yellow polenta from Machiavelli Foods, an Italian food distributor that also has its own restaurant, deli and mail order business (they also do some fabulous cheeses). Another good option is the stoneground polenta from Savoria. They're not ready in five minutes, no, but contrary to what some recipe books may have you believe, they don't require 45 minutes of back-breaking stirring either.

Certainly some of the old Italian traditions for making polenta are charming - like cooking it in a copper pot over a wood fire and (rather as with barbecues) getting the male of the household to do it. But this is the 21st century. You don't have to stir it constantly if you use a good non-stick saucepan. And that whole faff about raining the polenta through your fingers while desperately stirring to discourage lumps? No: boil the water in your kettle, put the polenta and salt in your saucepan, and add the boiled water gradually to the saucepan, stirring as you do so. Much easier, and the kettle-boiled water will still be hot enough to burst the starch grains nicely (though I haven't actually sat down with Harold McGee and performed scientific tests on this).

Once it's underway, you only need to stir it occasionally while you're making your sauce or other accompaniment. But towards the end of cooking it does spit like billy-o, and it is hot-hot-hot. You need to use your longest-handled spoon - I tend to use one of those flat-ended wooden paddles because they fit nicely into the corners of my saucepan. And at some point I'll invariably adopt 'the Orka technique', which involves wearing a gauntlet-length silicone oven mitt and standing a couple of feet away from the stove.

But more and more I'm choosing to cook polenta in the crockpot instead. It needs two hours on high for stoneground polenta but you just bung it in, cover and let it cook itself, so it's less work even than using instant polenta. I like the creamy red pepper polenta recipe from the manufacturer, but halve it and don't bother melting the butter first - you don't need to when you're using boiling water from the kettle. Old Italian cooks may sniff, but then the recipe is American - as is corn itself - so if anyone complains you could tell them it's grits.

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