POLENTA BITES

Good Morning.  Well another week of Football in the books and I for one am exhausted.  Two games on Monday night, are they kidding?  If I still lived on the East Coast I would be hopping mad.  Those people had to be up way past 1:00 am.  Let's not have any more  of that.  And secondly who wants to be eating football food at that time of night.  And let's face it what's a football game without food?  I am one of the biggest fans in the world but come on, you need food to carry you through all those games on the weekend.  You know that this is leading up to some recipes to carry through those game don't you?  So here are a couple for today.

First of all, some Polenta bites.  These are great because you can make the polenta a day ahead.  And also the toppings.  Make the polenta as in the recipe I gave you before.  Pour it out and spread it to about  1/4" thick.  Then cut it with a cookie cutter round that is about an inch and a half.  So you have nice little bite sized rounds.  Now you can top them with several different things.  And here are some that I use.
You will want to make small batches of each of these depending on how many you want to serve.  Mix them up and you will have an array of wonderful, tempting little bites.
1.  mix a 1/4 cup of Ricotta with lemon zest and finely chopped chives.  Spread onto the polenta round (about 1/2 tsp) and top with a small cooked shrimp.
2.  Cut fresh mozzarella into thin slices to fit on round and top with 1/2 cherry tomato and a small basil leaf.  Drizzles these with a little olive oil, salt and pepper.
3.  Quickly saute some pepperoni slices in a little olive oil.  Top each round with a square piece of provolone cheese and a pepperoni slice.  Put into your toaster oven and let the cheese just begin to melt.
4.   Make a mixture of crab meat, enough mayo just to lightly coat, a little Dijon mustard, and lemon juice.  Top the round with this mixture and zest a little lemon on top.  Salt and pepper to taste.
5.  Make a mixture of cream cheese, chopped roasted red peppers (packed in olive oil and well drained) and finely chopped fresh basil.  Top the rounds.
6.  In a blender, blend some artichoke hearts that have been packed in water and drained,  ( 1 small jar)
while blending add about 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 3 tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese.  Remove from blender, top the rounds and put these into the toaster oven (or oven at 350 degrees) till hot.
7.  Have two cooked Italian sausages (done ahead of time) cut into rounds.  In a saute pan, pour 1/2 to 3/4 cups of balsamic vinegar.  Cook over med heat till reduced by half.  Put the sausage slices into the pan and saute' till they absorb the vinegar.  Top each round with a slice of the sausage.  (you can also just make a big plate of these sausages and serve them hot)  They are really awesome.

Try these and get inventive on your own.  You can top them with what ever you like.  And if you want to serve a little sweet one in between times don't forget you can make the one in the blog before with the Ricotta, orange and honey.  These are snacks, later on I will give you some recipes for the "real food" for your football games.

Football fans Mangia!
Ciao for now.  Thanks for dropping in today.
Grayce