Creamy Polenta & Polenta Cake | Chef Jean-Pierre

Ok friends, it's in the oven. I just left it in there for the last few minutes. And this is how you make a polenta cake and it's delicious. Stay tuned, I'm going to show you exactly how to make it. This is really delicious. Well hello there friends, another essential. I call it essential because this is going to go on our playlist under essential. You know that's where we put the pesto, that's where we put some basic things like the garlic puree, and all the stuff that you need that are essential. And this, my friends, is an essential thing to learn how to make. It's a goat cheese polenta. You can serve it with so many things. I mean you don't have to put goat cheese. Sometimes I put it with brie cheese, I put it with cheddar cheese, parmigiano reggiano. You pick the cheese, you put it in there. It's very simple to make and it's not complicated. I don't do anything complicated. If it's complicated, I don't do it. You guys want to do things that are simple and are delicious. I love to serve it with garlic shrimp, I love to serve it with short ribs, I love to serve it with any chicken, any fish, as a side dish. I grew up on a goat cheese polenta, on a polenta. My mom is Italian and instead of mashed potato, we would have polenta with so many different things. You put spinach in it, you can put mushrooms in it, you can put sun-dried tomatoes, you can put all kinds of things in it. Let me get going and do it. We got a beautiful chicken stock. We got some buttermilk. We have some cornmeal. This is the pot-cooked cornmeal. It goes faster. It's very fine cornmeal. It's from Goya food. It's delicious. You can use whatever you want. I have corn. You can use frozen corn. That's not a problem. I have cheddar cheese. You can use cheddar cheese, Parmigiano-Reggiano, goat cheese, eggs, three eggs, and a little bit of garlic. And a little bit of hot sauce. You do whatever you want with the ingredients. Those are the basic ingredients that I like to use. You know I don't use water in nothing. Water tastes like nothing. So we don't use water. So I got two cups of chicken stock and I got a cup of buttermilk. Now you know buttermilk, this is whole buttermilk. Buttermilk is really amazing. It's very low in fat. You know a lot of people say oh my goodness buttermilk, buttermilk, buttermilk is low in fat. Matter of fact, it has about four or five grams of fat per cup. You see what happens here friends when you put the buttermilk in it, it kind of curdles in here. You see? Don't worry. Don't let it bother you. It will all come together with just a little whisking. Don't worry about a thing. That's what happens. Buttermilk is very low in fat so it doesn't hold together. It's not like heavy whipping cream or even half and half. Now we're going to put the cornmeal. We're going to put it in slowly because if I put it in too fast, you know what happens? It kind of gives you some lumpy stuff. So lumpy stuff, that's a new culinary term. Leave it up to me. I come up with them. I'm good with that. I make my own English. Alright here we go. Now for those of you that think my accent is a fake accent, it's not. I'm half French and half Italian. But now I'm 100% American. God bless America. God bless the rest of the world. We need some blessing. So friends, here's what we're going to do. We're going to put some eggs, whole eggs. We're going to put corn. Corn, corn, corn. You can use frozen corn if you want. You can use grilled corn. It's even better. And then we're going to put some garlic cloves. Three of them. Or you can use the garlic puree I showed you how to make. That's another essential. Garlic puree. Another essential. So we're going to take this and we're going to process it. Thank goodness I got this new Cuisinart. It's silent. I mean it doesn't make very much noise. The old one I had was like so noisy. I got all my cheese in there that I'm going to put in a minute. In there I'm going to put them. Let me get this hot. Let me get this hot over there. It looks like it went on a break. Oh, here it is. Oh, here you go. Oh, mamma mia. There you go. You see? I got to be careful not to put it too hot. But this is an induction cooktop. That thing, man, you turn it on. It goes. You turn it off. It stops immediately as well. So I got it on five, six. Very fancy. Turn on and off. I just got to touch the button and go on and off. It's very cool. So we're cooking this and we're going to turn this off. That was a little noisy. We're going to turn it off. I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to take it out of here. I'll take the machine out of here so it's not in my way. All right? So I can finish the rest. And here we have it. We're ready to go. You see it? I'm cooking it. I'm cooking it. I'm cooking it. I got to put salt and pepper. Salt and pepper. What? Did you see that? It's splattering. Let me make it a little less fast. Salt and pepper. OK. Now, there's no hot sauce in there. I like to put a little sriracha in there, but a certain is not necessary, friends. OK. I got beautiful English cheddar. You don't like cheddar? Don't put cheddar. You could put Gruyere cheese. You could put Swiss cheese in there. You could put other cheese you want. Gouda. Gouda. Gouda would be delicious. Smoked gouda in there. So this one is a basic recipe. A little goat cheese. You don't like goat cheese? Don't put it in. You know, that's the whole thing about cooking. You don't like a certain ingredient? Don't put it in. Now, if it has egg in it, and you don't put the egg in it, you're going to have an issue. You can't say all of a sudden, you know what? I don't like egg. I'm not going to put egg. Well, then make another recipe, yeah? OK. You got a certain ingredient. But if you don't like a certain cheese, put another cheese in there if you don't like it. You really don't have to have this cheese at all. You can definitely, definitely squeeze the cheese. You see, look, by the way, it's melting, melting, melting. Everything is going good. So now, let me tell you about polenta. Oh, by the way, this is the new machine that when you go like this, the blade doesn't fall. Look, you remember the old one? You used to put that in there and the blade would fall and then we try to catch it. No good. You don't want to be catching it. No, sir. See right here? It's holding. That blade is holding. Look, look at this. It's pretty cool, huh? See right there? There we go. Right there. All right, so I'm done with this. I'm going to let it cook. So now, let me tell you a little bit about this polenta. First of all, the egg is going to start cooking and the egg is going to start thickening. Let me tell you something. You eat this. Let me put a hot sauce because I can't concentrate it unless all my ingredients are in it. You don't have to put the hot sauce. Don't put it in if you don't like it. You know, to me, a hot sauce is good. It's in the background. Flavors have to be delicate. They have to be in the background. If it's too much, and what do we mean by background? It's in the back. It's not in the front. If it's in the front, the minute you eat, it's got hot sauce in there. I got too much hot sauce. You could put a little nutmeg in there. You can have fun with it. You know what you could do also? My mom used to do that all the time. Take some spinach and mushroom, sauté them with a little sun-dried tomatoes and put them in there. You can do so many things with this, okay? And one of my favorite way to eat polenta, believe it or not, is I put it in like a soup plate. I put it in the bottom of the plate and I put garlic shrimp on top. A recipe you should find, you should look at. It's an old one. We're going to probably reshoot it, but right now I still think it's on our website. It's gambas al ajillo. Gambas al ajillo. Garlic shrimp. I make a garlic shrimp and you put that garlic shrimp on top of the polenta in a plate. Oh mamma mia. Let me tell you, it's going to be amazing, all right? So look, it's cooking. It's cooking or is it to sleep? So we can serve this soft like it is now, but we're going to let it cook just a little bit more. I like it to thicken to the consistency of mashed potatoes. We can serve it soft in a bowl or we can serve as a cake, polenta cake. You go to Italian restaurant and they serve you those polenta cake. You know, they're round or they're square or triangle or whatever they make them. How do they get them? Well, first they got to get this. They got to get them to that shape right here because that's the part that is important. So you cook it. First you got to test it, friends. You got to test it because you never know. You never know if you, if you forgot the salt and pepper. That wouldn't be the first time I do it. Oh baby. This is delicious. I'm just going to bring it to boil and then you got to watch because it's splatter everywhere, this thing. And then I'm going to show you how do we turn this into a cake, okay? How do we turn this to a cake? I'll show you. I'll show you. So instead of cooking it in a pot when you want to make it a cake, you don't cook it in a pot. You cook it in the oven. Yeah. So here we go. Look, I'll show you. What I did is I took a little brush and I melt a little butter. Butter, butter. You got to have butter. Don't be afraid to put butter, folks. Butter is better for everything. Butter makes everything better. Butter makes everything butter. No, butter makes everything. Did I say butter? I say butter. I say butter makes everything butter. Butter makes everything better. It really does. I love butter, but we can talk about that some other time. So we want a whole butter right here. We don't want to clarify butter or anything. Just regular butter, right? We're going to put that in there. And now, now we're going to take our polenta and we're going to put it right on here, friends. We're going to put it right on here. And on our website, you'll have the recipe, the complete recipe. Print that out. Remember for those of you that are not familiar with that, because I get a lot of comments, hey, where's the recipe? Where's the recipe? We can't find the recipe. If you, right below the recipe, friends, right below the recipe, there's a thing that says show more, a thing. So it says show more. You click on that and open up. In the bottom of the video, it tells you right there, the recipe. You go in, you go to the website, you download the recipe and you can make it. Now, let me tell you something. Let me just make it nice, eh? I'll make it nice. You know, I used to do drywall work. So look, we're going to take it right here. That's it. We're not doing anything. We're not being difficult, right? We're just not doing anything. And then all of a sudden I'm fixing it. Oh yeah, I'm going to leave it alone, right? Now I'm going to take it, friends. I'm going to pop it in the oven. Here's how you do it. Let me tell you. You pop it in the oven about 375 and you're going to cook this thing, but no more than 10 to 15 minutes until it's slightly solid. If you cooked it long enough here, then you really don't have to cook it that long in the oven, because if you cook it too long in the oven, it's going to dry and then we're going to let it cool to get the room temperature. And then tomorrow or tonight, I put it in the fridge overnight. It solidifies. Wrap it when it's cool. Wrap it really good. Tomorrow you take it, you cut it in slices, in cubes, in circles, whatever you want. And to reheat them, you can put them in a fry pan, those circles, those square, whatever it is. Get them hot or you can pop them in the oven and reheat them. And you can serve it with so many things. Next to a steak, next to a lamb chop, next to a chicken. Trust me, it's delicious. But first try it soft. You may like it soft. You may decide you don't want to make a square out of it. You just want it soft. Either way, I promise you, you're going to like it. I hope you like this recipe. If you like it, remember give us a thumbs up. Don't forget to ring the bell so you get a notification every Thursday when I make a new video. And don't forget to subscribe to our channel. Please, we need subscribers. We hope you enjoyed it. We'll see you next week with another video.