Fresh Corn Polenta

I'd read about fresh corn polenta recently, and, being a huge fan of both fresh corn and polenta, I thought I'd give it a go. After a trip to the farmer's market, I picked up some sweet corn along with tomatoes, zucchini, summer squash, and eggplants. My philosophy with roasting vegetables is that if you're going to go, go all out; there's really no reason to roast a small amount of vegetables as they keep well in the fridge and you can eat them throughout the week with minimal effort. Two sheet pans of roasted vegetables later, I was ready to make my polenta.

As it turns out, turning sweet corn into polenta is an incredibly quick process. All you do is grate your ears of corn (roughly two per person) on the coarse side of a box grater into a sauce pan (note that this makes somewhat of a mess, so wear an apron). Then simmer the corn over low heat, stirring frequently until it thickens, stir in a little butter and salt, and you're set. All in all, a 10 minute process.

The flavor of fresh corn polenta is entirely different from it's traditional counterpart. It's incredibly sweet, which obviously has something to do with the type of corn you're using, so if you can find a less-sweet variety of corn, choose that one. Coupled with the roasted vegetables that had caramelized a bit, the sweetness was a tad overwhelming. However, the polenta was great with the tomatoes that had retained some of their acidity.

Regardless of the flavor, the presentation was lovely. I'm not sure if I'll be making fresh corn polenta again, but I'm glad my curiosity has been satisfied.