One of my most favorite things is polenta with a rich, meaty sauce. That’s what Iris and I had for dinner tonight, and I think I’ve edited it down to its elemental form.

First, the polenta. I’ve flirted with various methods for making it–stovetop, double boiler, oven, grill. Okay, not grill. I’ve come back around to the oven method, as described in Best American Recipes 1999. It takes a while, but it’s foolproof. No clumping, no sticking to the pot. I’ve also toyed with making polenta with milk or chicken stock. Not necessary. Water is fine. But I do like to stir in butter and Parmigiano at the end, partly because it tastes great and partly because I like watching the texture get creamier as the cheese insinuates itself between the grains of cornmeal.

To make polenta in the oven: Preheat oven to 350°F. In a medium saucepan, Stir together 1 cup polenta, 1 tablespoon butter, 1 teaspoon salt, and 4 cups water. Bake uncovered, 45 minutes. Stir (you can add more water at this point if the polenta is thicker than you like), cover, and return to the oven for another 10 minutes or until dinner. If you double the recipe, the times will be longer–more like 90 minutes total.

The meat sauce was the Brunelleschi sauce from The Campagna Table. It works well with polenta because the meat retains some chew, unlike with a ragu–not that I’d ever say to no polenta with ragu.

I think I’d shied away from making the oven polenta method my house standard because it just seemed too easy. I know you don’t have to stir polenta constantly (there’s a funny bit about this in Heat), but can you really make great polenta by turning it into some kind of…casserole?

Yep.

Okay, here’s our first crack at a podcast. I asked Iris what she wanted to talk about, and she said Blue C Sushi, which is where we’re having lunch today.

[Iris Out Loud 1: Blue C Sushi](https://www.rootsandgrubs.com/podcasts/IrisOutLoud-1.m4a) (364K AAC)

Future installments won’t follow this interview format–it feels too much like school. But we were both eager to put something up, so please let me know if the audio quality is okay (we ended up using my little voice recorder) and if you have any trouble downloading.

Despite my clever standard shopping list, I forget something every time I go to Trader Joe’s. Yesterday it was cream for the gratin dauphinois I’m making tomorrow. This was doubly silly because I was actually looking at the cream section and noticing something funny.

When I buy cream, it’s generally Organic Valley–a popular brand in my organic-oriented neighborhood. What I like most about it is that it’s not ultra-pasteurized, which means it whips easier and tastes better. They’ve carried it at Trader Joe’s for a while for $2.79 a pint, much less than the $4 and up they charge at local supermarkets.

Recently, Trader Joe’s introduced their own brand of organic cream. Like Organic Valley, it comes in pint containers and is non-ultra-pasteurized. The weird part is the price: $2.99. Is there anyone who wants to pay a premium for the Trader Joe’s brand? I’m not criticizing the quality of TJ’s house brand; most of their stuff is great. But most of it is cheap. I like the TJ’s Italian sausage a lot, and it doesn’t hurt that it’s priced a couple dollars less than the Isernio’s sitting next to it on the shelf.

There, Freakonomics moment over.

As I’ve mentioned before, Sara Dickerman once wrote a great series for the Stranger called Pastry Police. I’m not out to duplicate that work, but I want to call your attention to one particular pastry violation that annoyed me today. Like last time, it’s croissant-related. A great many of my daily thoughts are croissant-related.

One of the points that Brian Wansink makes in Mindless Eating is that rather than eating until we’re full, we take a serving size that we estimate we might want, and then we eat the whole thing. That spells trouble of the eyes-bigger-than-stomach variety. A while back I realized that if I order the smallest size of something on the menu, I’m almost always satisfied by the time I’m finished.

Unfortunately, a lot of things aren’t offered in different sizes. Take croissants. The typical Seattle croissant, like those I encountered this morning at Victrola, is so big that it probably violates the Growth Management Act. I feel about croissants the way I do about chocolate: I know the difference between good chocolate and bad; I wish I could always have good chocolate; but I’ll take bad chocolate over no chocolate. If I’m hungry, I’ll eat a not-so-flaky or underbaked croissant. But I won’t order a croissant the size of Spokane. I’d pay the same price for a croissant half as big. This is not me putting on an abstemious display. This is me saying that a bloated croissant looks gross.

I know this is a tired complaint, and I might as well be protesting outside the Cheesecake Factory. But do you think the Pastry Police are hiring?