Italian Polenta with Borlotti Beans | Polenta e Fagioli
Polenta e fagioli is what the Veneto countryside ate on the days when there was no meat, which for most families was most days. Maize and the borlotto bean arrived from the Americas within a century of each other, were planted in the same field and cooked in the same kitchen. The version here comes from the open farmland of the plain, where ripe tomatoes went into the bean pot from late summer and rosemary came off the hedge at the end of the row.
There is no pork in it. That is a choice, not an omission: the lean version, what a Veneto cook calls di magro, was the ordinary weekday form of the dish. What replaces the fat is olive oil used with a heavy hand at the end, Parmigiano stirred into the polenta, and a great deal of black pepper.
Everything rests on two pots that must arrive at the table at the same moment. The beans have to hold their shape inside a sauce thick enough to sit on a spoon, and the polenta has to stay loose enough to spread slowly across the bowl.
Yield: 6 servings. Prep: 30 minutes. Cook: 1 hour 20 minutes for the beans and sauce, 45 minutes for the polenta, overlapping. Total: about 1 hour 50 minutes. Difficulty: easy in technique, demanding in patience. Course: primo piatto. Region: the Veneto plain.
The Story
Both halves of this dish are immigrants that became the definition of local. The common bean reached Italian gardens in the first half of the sixteenth century, a curiosity among noble households before it fell to people who needed calories. Maize followed on the same trade routes and spread through Venetian territory fast, because it yielded more food per field than any grain the north had grown. By the seventeenth century the two were planted together, the beans climbing the maize stalks.
The economics made the dish compulsory. Under the sharecropping arrangements of the Veneto plain, wheat was the landlord share, milled for white bread the family who grew it rarely tasted, while maize and beans stayed in the farmhouse. So polenta e fasioi, as it is still called in dialect from Verona across to Padua and down into the Polesine, was not a recipe anybody chose. It was what the division of the harvest left behind, eaten hot, then eaten again cold and sliced the next morning.
There is an accidental intelligence in it. Maize protein is short of lysine and beans are full of it, so the pairing is far better nourishment than either alone, and families who ate the two together stayed healthier than those who ate maize by itself. The tomato is the late arrival, ordinary in these kitchens only from the last decades of the nineteenth century, and it turned a pale soup into the red bowl people now expect. Rosemary was already there, at the field edge.
Ingredients
For the beans and tomato
Cooked borlotti beans, drained, 4 cups (680 g)
Crushed tomatoes, 2 cups (475 ml)
Yellow onion, finely diced, 1 medium (150 g)
Garlic cloves, thinly sliced, 2 (10 g)
Rosemary sprigs, 2
Extra virgin olive oil, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Bean cooking liquid or light vegetable stock, 1 cup (240 ml), plus more as needed
Fine sea salt, 1 tsp (6 g), or to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For the polenta
Coarse stone ground yellow cornmeal, 1 1/2 cups (255 g)
Water, 6 cups (1.4 L)
Coarse sea salt, 2 tsp (12 g)
Grated Parmigiano Reggiano, 1/2 cup (45 g)
For finishing
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml), for the table
Rosemary leaves, very finely chopped, 1 tsp
Freshly ground black pepper, generous
Grated Parmigiano Reggiano, extra at the table
Preparation
Step 1
Get the beans and their liquid ready. From dried borlotti, soak 1 1/2 cups (280 g) overnight, drain, then simmer in fresh unsalted water with a bay leaf for 50 to 70 minutes, until a bean crushes easily against the roof of the mouth, salting only in the last 10 minutes. Keep 1 cup (240 ml) of that cooking water: it is starchy and it is the best liquid for adjusting the sauce later. Canned beans work, but rinse them and use light vegetable stock instead.
Step 2
Sweat the onion slowly. Warm the 3 tbsp (45 ml) of olive oil in a wide heavy saucepan over low heat and add the diced onion with a pinch of salt. Give it 12 to 15 minutes, stirring now and then, until it is soft and translucent with no colour at all. This is the only place where sweetness is built, and higher heat gives browned edges over a raw core. Add the garlic and one rosemary sprig for the last 2 minutes.
Step 3
Reduce the tomato until it is a sauce, not a liquid. Pour in the 2 cups (475 ml) of crushed tomatoes, bring the surface to a steady blip, then lower the heat and cook uncovered for 25 to 30 minutes, stirring and scraping the base. It is ready when the colour turns from bright red to brick, the oil comes back to the surface in small pools, and a spoon drawn across the bottom leaves a track that closes slowly. Under reduced tomato is the main reason this dish ends up watery.
Step 4
Fold in the beans and let them take the sauce. Add the drained borlotti, the second rosemary sprig, half the reserved bean liquid, the salt and a good grinding of pepper. Return to the barest simmer and cook, partly covered, for 20 to 25 minutes, lifting with a flat wooden spoon rather than churning, because beans stirred hard shed their skins and cloud the sauce. The target is whole glossy beans in a sauce that just coats them.
Step 5
Start the polenta and cook it for the full time. Bring the 6 cups (1.4 L) of water to a boil in a wide heavy pot with the coarse salt already in it, since cornmeal takes salt inside each grain as it absorbs water. Lower the heat until the water rolls gently, then let the meal fall in a thin steady rain from your fist while whisking without pause. Swap the whisk for a long wooden spoon and cook over low heat for 45 minutes, stirring every 4 or 5 minutes right into the angle where the base meets the wall of the pot. It is done when no chalky centre is left in a grain crushed between the fingers and the pot smells of toasted sweet corn.
Step 6
Adjust the consistency and stir in the cheese. Polenta keeps thickening off the heat, so judge it on the loose side. If it stiffens before the 45 minutes are up, beat in hot water 1/4 cup (60 ml) at a time and let it work in before judging again; cold water leaves hard fragments behind. Pull the pot off the heat, wait 1 minute, then beat in the 1/2 cup (45 g) of Parmigiano. Cheese worked into boiling polenta tightens and turns stringy.
Step 7
Bring the two pots together at the last moment. Lift out both rosemary sprigs, taste for salt, and slacken the sauce with the remaining bean liquid if it tightened while the polenta finished. The polenta should fall in a wide ribbon that settles almost flat within about 5 seconds; if it holds a peak, beat in another splash of hot water. Serve immediately: this dish waits for nobody.
Plating
Use wide shallow bowls and warm them at 175°F (80°C) for a few minutes, because a cold bowl turns a flowing spoonful into a stiff disc before the second mouthful. Ladle the polenta in first and let it find its own level rather than spreading it with a spoon. Make a shallow well in the centre, then spoon the beans and their sauce into it so the red sits inside the yellow and does not run to the rim. Two thirds polenta to one third beans by volume is the traditional balance, and the bowl should look full rather than composed.
Finish at the table: a thread of good olive oil in a spiral over the beans, a pinch of chopped rosemary, a hard grinding of black pepper and grated Parmigiano on the side. Nothing else belongs here, and in particular no chopped parsley.
Professional Technique
The controlling technique is running two starch systems side by side and finishing them in the same minute. Cornmeal releases starch gradually into a fixed quantity of water and goes on absorbing until the granules are fully swollen, which is why polenta cannot be hurried and why it keeps setting as it cools. Beans release starch too, from the few that always burst, and that is what binds the tomato sauce without flour or cream. Knowing both pots are thickening on their own timetable is what lets you steer them.
The second is sequencing: the tomato is reduced before the beans go in. Reduced together, the beans would sit over heat for the thirty minutes the tomato needs, and beans held that long break down and go floury. Reducing the tomato alone exposes them to only the twenty minutes they need. The order costs nothing and it is the difference between whole glossy borlotti and a purée with skins in it.
The third is the late Parmigiano, off the heat. Above roughly 180°F (82°C) the casein network of an aged cheese contracts and squeezes out its fat, which is why cheese dropped into a boiling pot gives strings under an oily film.
Texture and Moisture Control
Two consistencies are judged in different ways. The polenta is judged by how it falls: a wide slow ribbon that flattens in about 5 seconds, noticeably looser than polenta meant to be cooled and sliced. The bean sauce is judged on the plate, by whether it stays inside the well you made or bleeds to the rim. If it bleeds, it needs five more minutes uncovered.
The starch in the bean cooking water corrects both, so keep that cup within reach. It loosens the sauce without watering down its flavour the way plain water does, and a spoonful beaten into stiffening polenta works better than stock. What it cannot do is rescue undercooked cornmeal, which stays chalky at the centre of the grain however much liquid arrives later.
Temperature is the hidden variable. Polenta at 200°F (93°C) behaves like a sauce and at 150°F (65°C) like a pudding, and an unwarmed bowl covers that distance in about four minutes. If service must be delayed, hold the polenta over a very low bain marie under a film of hot water and beat that water in as it goes out.
Professional Mise en Place
The dish hangs on the 45 minutes of the polenta. The beans can be finished and held warm, the polenta cannot wait at all, so the polenta is the clock everything else answers to.
Equipment and tools
Wide heavy based pot for the polenta, wider than it is tall
Balloon whisk for the first minutes and a long wooden spoon for the rest
Second heavy saucepan for the soffritto, tomato and beans
Flat wooden spoon for lifting the beans without breaking them
Prepared ahead
Borlotti cooked and cooled in their liquid, up to 3 days ahead, refrigerated
Tomato reduced with the soffritto, up to 2 days ahead, refrigerated
Parmigiano grated on the day, and the bean liquid measured into a jug
Service setup
Bowls warming, oil, pepper mill and extra cheese on the pass
Bean sauce held just below a simmer, rosemary still in it
Hot water ready for the final adjustment, everyone seated before the polenta comes off the heat
Chef Tips
Buy the coarsest stone ground cornmeal you can find and check the milling date. Whole grain maize meal keeps the germ and therefore the oil, and that oil goes rancid within months in a warm shop. That stale cardboard note is why many people think they dislike polenta. Keep the bag in the freezer once open.
Cook the borlotti yourself if there is any way to do it. The liquid they leave behind is the most useful thing in the recipe, and packing brine is no substitute. Dried beans also hold their shape far better through the twenty minutes in the tomato.
Taste for salt only after the tomato has finished reducing. Salt concentrates as water leaves, so a sauce seasoned at the start is aggressive by the end, and the Parmigiano brings more salt to the bowl on top of it. Season lightly, reduce, then correct.
If polenta is left over, spread it 3/4 inch (2 cm) deep on an oiled tray while hot and let it set overnight. Cut it into slabs the next day, grill them and spoon the reheated beans over. That second meal is as traditional as the first.
Common Mistakes
Adding the cornmeal too fast or into water at a rolling boil. Both make lumps that never dissolve, because the outside of each clump gelatinises instantly and seals raw flour inside. Lower the heat, then rain the meal in slowly while whisking.
Cutting the polenta cooking time short. At 25 minutes it looks finished and tastes of raw flour, with a chalky centre no amount of cheese will cover. Coarse meal needs the full 45 minutes, and the aroma of toasted corn is the reliable signal.
Simmering the beans as long as the tomato needs. Beans held over heat for half an hour collapse, shed their skins and thicken the sauce into a dull purée. Reduce the tomato alone and give the beans the last twenty minutes only.
Stirring in the Parmigiano while the pot is still bubbling. The cheese tightens, releases its fat and leaves strings under an oily film. Take the polenta off the heat, wait a minute, then beat it in hard.
Serving into cold bowls. Polenta sets below about 150°F (65°C) and a cold bowl gets it there in minutes, turning a flowing spoonful into a stiff cake with the beans sliding off. Warm every bowl.
Wine Pairing
Valpolicella Classico DOC: The house red of the hills above Verona and the most natural bottle for this bowl. Corvina gives sour cherry fruit and a light bitter twist, with soft tannin and brisk acidity that cuts through the olive oil and the cheese. Light in body, it never sits on top of a dish that is already substantial, and served at 59°F (15°C) it tastes brighter still against the reduced tomato.
Soave Superiore DOCG: The white answer, from volcanic soils east of Verona, and better with beans than most people expect. Garganega has a waxy texture and stone fruit weight that stands up to the starch, while its almond edged finish echoes the faint bitterness of the cornmeal. Its acidity is moderate rather than sharp, which suits sweet reduced tomato.
Bardolino DOC: Grown on the moraine hills at the southern end of Lake Garda from broadly the same grapes as Valpolicella, but lighter, paler and fresher. Red currant and crushed herbs run alongside the rosemary rather than competing with it, and the low tannin leaves the bean skins alone. This is the bottle for a warm evening.
Bianco di Custoza DOC: A blend from the flat country south of Garda, built on Garganega with Trebbiano and Cortese, and quietly one of the best value whites of the region. Softer and more floral than Soave, with pear and a faint white pepper lift that meets the pepper on the bowl. Serve it at 50°F (10°C).
Teroldego Rotaliano DOC: A step up in weight for anyone who wants the dish met rather than refreshed. Grown on the gravel plain of the Campo Rotaliano in Trentino, it brings dark berry fruit and a firm acidic spine with fine grained tannin. That structure handles concentrated tomato better than any lighter red, and its savoury herbal note finds the rosemary.
Storage & Reheating
Store the two components separately, never in the same box. The beans in their tomato keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 4 days and improve on the second day. They freeze well for up to 3 months in portions, and thaw overnight in the refrigerator rather than in the microwave, which breaks the beans.
Polenta does not keep as polenta. Within a few hours it sets into a solid block, and while it can be beaten soft again it is never quite the same. Reheat it over low heat with hot water or milk added at the start, breaking it up with a whisk. Expect up to 1/2 cup (120 ml) of liquid per 2 cups of set polenta, and taste for salt afterwards.
The better plan is to treat the block as a different dish. Chill it, cut it into slabs, grill them dry on a very hot ridged pan for 3 to 4 minutes a side and spoon the reheated beans over. Do not freeze soft polenta: it separates into water and gritty paste on thawing.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 6 servings:
Calories: 420 kcal
Total Fat: 12 g
Saturated Fat: 3 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 9 g
Cholesterol: 7 mg
Sodium: 560 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 62 g
Fiber: 12 g
Total Sugars: 6 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 16 g
Lactose: 0.1 g
Principal micronutrients: folate, iron, potassium, magnesium, manganese, calcium, vitamin B6
These figures are estimates. Fiber and protein are high for a meatless primo because maize and borlotti complement each other, and the sodium depends mostly on how heavily the polenta water was salted.
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