This recipe is a find for someone like me, who is home all day but doesn't have a lot of time to devote hands-on to stirring polenta. It's from Paula Wolfert's The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen. I always make my polenta with regular cornmeal but this recipe comes out so silky I'd like to try it with a courser meal, maybe even something marketed as polenta. It was a great bland base for the extra-spicy sausage and broccolini I served over the top, although it might have been too bland. There's a point at which Woflert adds more salt that I forgot to add.

You just combine 1 cup cornmeal with 4 cups water, a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of olive oil or melted butter in a casserole dish, then bake for 1 hour 20 minutes in a 350 degree oven, then stir (add more salt to taste) and bake for 10 minutes longer. Simple!