| It's that time of year again—the dead of winter, a time when one longs for warming, comforting dishes. In other words, it's polenta time. And even if winter has been surprisingly mild around here, I couldn't let the season go by without at least one polenta recipe. Especially one as tasty as this one. Polenta is an ideal accompaniment for rich stews like the gulasch triestino we recently featured or the sausage and pork ribs braised in tomato sauce so dear to Romans. But for polenta lovers like myself, it's perfectly delicious in its own right, and there's no better proof than today's dish. A speciality of Val d'Aosta, a tiny region tucked away in the northwestern corner of Italy, polenta concia, also known as polenta grassa or "fat" polenta, is a positively ambrosial dish of polenta enriched with lots and lots of cheese and butter. For a dish that comes down to three or four simple ingredients—cornmeal, cheese, butter and sometimes milk—polenta concia has an amazing number of variations. It's really more of a family of recipes than a single dish. Yet another example of the endless creativity that Italians apply to even the humblest kind of cookery. So for this post, you'll find my favorite recipe for polenta concia in the main text, and then a survey of its numerous extended family in the Notes. It's a family that's well worth getting to know. You could spend some very pleasant (if rather fattening) hours working your way through all the various versions of this dish. For the recipe, click on the image above or the "Read More" button below. And don't forget to leave a like or a comment. We love hearing from you!
Happy cooking!
Frank | 
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