Sunday January 9, 2011

Polenta halva/pudding

Today's Food Diary

Breakfast: Missed

Lunch: Chicken liver on sourdough toast

Dinner: Potato, soy bean and vege soup

Baking/sweets: Polenta halva/pudding, wheat flour pudding

I like secondary cuts of meat. In addition to superior taste, nutrition and texture, they are also generally cheaper. Cheap, tasty and good - can't really go wrong!

Chicken liver on sourdough toast

The liver was sauteed with garlic, onion and curry powder. It didn't need anything more.

The polenta halva or pudding was an experiment. Halva is a popular dessert in many Middle Eastern, Asian and Eastern European countries. It is generally made using semolina, plain flour or ground nuts. The last halvas I tried was a Central Asian sunflower seed halva and a Turkish sesame halva. There is a common theme prevalent with most halva’s I tried – they are dense and delicious. It will easily fill you up!

I got inspiration to make polenta halva from Samina Cooks who presented a recipe for Rava Hulwa or Sweet Wheat Pudding. Samina’s recipe required cream of wheat and almond flour, neither of which is present in my pantry. I substituted polenta. I have been cooking and baking a lot with polenta recently, I like the flavour and texture and thought it would be a good alternative to cream of wheat. And it was.

The polenta halva has relatively low sugar and fat content. It can easily be made sugar free by substituting honey or other sweeteners. So while the polenta halva is dense and sweet it is not loaded with sugar and fat. Sounds a bit contradictory, doesn’t it.

Today's Favourite Blog

The Huffington Post

An interesting chart to help determine whether you are eating real food or something resembling food!

According to the chart the shortest route to reaching real food is looking for items with no label and sitting in the produce aisle or meat counter. The chart is super intelligent, it can point out if an item is either a hair or household product, to be consumed at your own risk!

Today's Favourite Photo

Source: Ang Sarap

Philipino beef curry - yum