Freeze-dried corn powder is the secret to great polenta. Freeze-
dried corn powder is the secret to great polenta. (SLATE)
"Polenta — I May Be Doing it Wrong." This was the subject line
of an email we received a couple of months ago, from a reader
who wanted to know why her cornmeal porridge always "seems to
turn out bland and somewhat uninteresting." "I've tried a couple
different preparations so far (sliced and baked, mush under
stew)," the reader explained, "but I'm just not a fan."  This is
understandable. Polenta does not inspire superfandom in most
people. (One prominent exception: Aziz Ansari.) That's partly
because its flavor is miles away from that of its essential
ingredient: corn. Most polenta retains only a whisper of the
sweet, tangy, summer-fresh deliciousness of that wonderful
vegetable. The process that turns fresh corn into coarse
cornmeal is, in its effects, roughly equivalent to whatever it
is that turned Tom Waits' 1973 voice into Tom Waits' 2013 voice.
On the taste buds, polenta barely re