How Do You Solve A Problem Like Polenta?

I stocked my cupboards up with a load of things of which I'd either never heard, or had never used before, after I made my decision to try a gluten free elimination diet to see whether it was wheat that was causing me all sorts of bleh. An overzealous shopper on this occasion, my basket at the local health food shop was laden in record time. Laden probably due to panic, certainly intrigue, and possibly something to do with a bogof deal. Actually it was buy one get on half price, but bogohp isn't as fun to have on the page. But stock up I most certainly did, with:

Corn flour I'd heard of as a thickener, but it is apparently also something you can use to make cakes and muffins, or used in a mix with other flours. (Bear with me. Plain flour, self-raising, and wholemeal were pretty much all I was aware of up until this point, and now they were being thrown out of the equation, I realised I was standing at the bottom of a very steep learning curve.) 

Brown rice, white rice, and the ever-popular but illogical-sounding glutinous rice seemed interesting and not too scary. The ordinary rice flours seem to be a staple in a lot of baking recipes, and the sweet rice flour looks like it could be really good fun given the right recipe!

Buckwheat flour initially confused me because the uh, 'wheat' in the name, but research (aka Mr Wikipedia) told me that it is actually a relation of rhubarb (this world of ours is a strange, strange place) and not a wheat or grass at all! It's one of the flours I read that you can use instead of almond flour, which is excellent, considering you need to take out a second mortgage to be able to afford enough almond flour for anything more than a couple of cup-cakes. 

I'm exaggerating. But only just. Note: I didn't get any almond flour. At eight euros for a three hundred and fifty gram bag I'm as well just buying a couple of boxes of inordinately expensive GF choc chip cookies from the local supermarket.

Anyhoo, if you'll give me a second to climb down off my high horse, I'll continue...

Chickpeas (garbanzo beans,), although new to me in flour form are loved be me in bean form, and I presume they can be used in much the same way as buckwheat flour - they seem a very similar texture, but of course that might mean nothing until I've used the chickpea flour for myself, which I plan to do in some Indian recipes I found online.

Coconut flour was a no-brainer simply because I love coconut. I have since come to, if not appreciate, then be aware of its fickle and thirsty ways, and I appear to have amassed quite the stock-pile in my cupboard. (It was the main ingredient of my first ever cake. Not the Idiot Cake, but the Travesty To Cake-Dom. I have learned much since then.)

But polenta, or corn meal (coarsely ground as opposed to the finely milled corn flour). It was there beside all the other meals and flours looking for all intents and purposes like it belonged with them. It was gluten free, bogohp, and although I'd heard of it, and was positive it would be a positive addition to my GF stash, I just wasn't sure how that would come to pass. And stayed not sure.

So those two bags of polenta have just languished there in my cupboard since July, waiting for me to remember I had them. Waiting, in fact, for me to find a cheap Kindle book on Amazon by Mark David Abbott called 'Cookies: Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Refined Sugar Free' (not an affiliated link, nor have I anything to do with the author) in which I found some lovely sounding recipes, including Orange Polenta Cookies. Ding-Ding-Ding! 

Orange Polenta Cookies

160 grams polenta

55 grams brown rice flour

48 grams almond flour (I used buckwheat)

1 tsp GF baking powder

50 grams coconut oil

50 grams palm sugar (I used light brown sugar)

grated rind of 1 orange

1 tsp orange juice (I used a tbs, but that's because I was squeezing the thing by hand and it may or may not have gone everywhere...)

1 egg

(optional couple of handfuls of white choc chips - not part of the original recipe, but I fancied them and thought white choc and orange would go nicely. And because chocolate.)

Like most of the (albeit beginner) recipes I've tried before, you mixed all the dry stuff together, then all the wet stuff together, then chucked them all together (I am now suffering from semantic satiation. Together together together) to make a dough. The recipe suggested using a food processor. I laughed in the face of such presumption and whipped out my cheap, plastic bowl and trusty wooden spoon.

The dough then had to be covered in cling-film (I have yet to be convinced that anything involving cling-film can possibly be less than a three-man job; one to hold the box, one to gently pull the fragile plastic from the box to the length needed, and one to carefully coax a tear across the width without letting go of the edges while simultaneously fighting the wrap's inner compulsion to fold up on itself in an intricate and intimate manner. I went through two metres of the stuff just to have enough to work with), rolled it into a log and let to set in the fridge for half an hour.

But Behold! A wrapped and submissive slab of polenta dough, and included in the deal, a still-life of my trusty heart-shaped measuring... things, which are marvellous in our eyes.

After thirty minutes you then carved it up into slices and bunged it in a medium oven (180C) for ten minutes.

Final instructions were to leave them on the baking tray(s) until they were cool. 

The nomming part was self-evident.

I have to say the gentle warning about the texture wasn't needed, and in fact I'm reminded of a coarse shortbread. The orange gives a lovely tang, the white chocolate a hint of decadence, and the biscuit itself isn't quite as crumbly as I expected. I may not have waited until they were cool to sample one :: cough :: so that expectation was placed at an unnatural low anyway. But they passed the I Don't Know What To Do With This Weird Ingredient test with flying colours, so I feel a little more hopeful that polenta's future will be spent out in the light with the rest of the cool GF flours instead of stuck in the dark corner of my kitchen cupboard pining away, forgotten and misunderstood !