Enjoy polenta any way you like

As someone who writes about Italian food, I pride myself in knowing, and understanding, Italian ingredients. But when it comes to polenta, I've been remiss.

I did not grow up eating polenta; my Italian mother did not care for it, even though hot polenta topped with ragu is a popular winter dish in her native region of Abruzzo. My own interest in it as a cook was half-hearted. How much appeal, after all, could there be in a bowl of cooked cornmeal? Mostly, the word "polenta" conjured unappetizing images of that vacuum-packed yellow sausage of solid, sliceable corn mush sold at the supermarket.

It was a visit to Valle d'Aosta during Christmas of 2018 that changed my mind about this quintessential cold weather comfort food. In Italy's smallest region, tucked up in the northwest corner of the peninsula, polenta is not just a pantry staple; it is a daily ritual, the way a dish of pasta remains a daily ritual for many people in southern Italy. In Aosta itself, a cozy alpine city ringed with mountains, polenta is featured on every restaurant and osteria menu. Even the town's mini Christmas market had two polenta stands, both of which almost always had customers lined up, no matter the time of day or night. The offerings were various: polenta drizzled with hot melted butter; polenta "concia," with lots of Fontina cheese stirred in; polenta topped with smoky grilled sausages; polenta with beef stew called carbonnade. In the four days my family and I spent there, we tasted them all, wrapping our hands around warm bowls and feeling the heat of the porridge radiate within us as we ate. All versions were good; but really it was the cornmeal itself, made from local stone-ground field corn, golden in color and toasty in flavor, and cooked at length to bring out the grain's natural sweetness, that won me over.

Polenta is an ancient...