by Falls, K. C.
Finely diced cooked chicken liver
For grilling or frying you will need to let the polenta ‘set up’. You will be able to slice it after it has cooled and been refrigerated for a few hours. I sometimes make mine in mini-tart pans so that I have scalloped discs perfect for one serving.
For “Polenta Pamplona” we are going to use a plain polenta base and top it with a spicy sausage mix.
Polenta:
1 cup cornmeal
3 ½ cups water (or chicken stock)
1 teaspoon salt
Bring the liquid to a boil on the stove and add the cornmeal while stirring constantly with a whisk. It will start to thicken almost immediately. Reduce the heat to low. Stir frequently while it cooks for about a twenty minutes. Be careful because the thick mixture will form little volcanos that will ‘erupt’ with steam and sometimes pieces of the mix will get thrown up. Torri likes a good eruption in her face as much as the next girl, but not when it’s hot polenta!
When the mixture is very thick, you will need to decide how you’re going to cool it. You can pour it into a loaf pan and slice it later when it solidifies. I use little mini loaf pans to cut squares about three inches by three inches. (This recipe will fill three mini loaf pans or one big one.) Another good method is to spread it out on a cookie sheet (with a lip on it) to a depth of about a third to a half inch thick. You can cut it into squares or triangles or even cut it with a cookie cutter into fancy shapes after refrigeration.
Spray whatever pan you use with nonstick cooking spray. Refrigerate until the polenta is very firm. Overnight is best. You can even do this step a couple of days in advance.
Pamplona topping:
1 pound uncooked chorizo sausage, squeezed out of its casing (spicy or not, your choice)
1 medium onion, chopped
½ green pepper, chopped
1 can of diced tomatoes, drained (reserve the juice for something else)
Several cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon of dried oregano
½ teaspoon of salt
Cracked pepper
Crumbled queso fresco (or other mild white cheese like provolone or mozzarella)
Brown the sausage, breaking it up as it cooks. Add the onion and green pepper when it is half cooked. Add the remaining ingredients and cook until the tomatoes dry a bit and start to break down.
Grill your polenta pieces on a sprayed grill or fry them in some olive oil. Frying takes longer, but it gives a delicious result. If grilling, turn the polenta once so you get nice hash marks on the polenta. If frying, take the time to get the pieces brown and crispy.
Top each piece of polenta with enough of the sausage mixture to approximately equal the depth of the polenta part and add a little cheese. Run them under a broiler to get the cheese browned just a bit. Serve and wait for the applause.
Cuatro’s Manchego Pork Tenderloin
This dish works equally well with chicken medallions. You can substitute the Manchego cheese (which is deadly expensive) with Asiago or even Parmesan cheese. If you use the Parm’, cut back on the amount of cheese or the sauce will be too strong. If you are pressed for time, use a jar of prepared Alfredo Sauce. That’s actually the inspiration for the original dish--a jar of Bertolli Alfredo Sauce. I developed this recipe specifically to reflect what might be served at Cuatro, a Spanish inspired eatery.
There is quite a bit of chopping involved in this dish, regardless of whether you make the sauce from scratch. It’s a good dish to make with a partner to share conversation (and work). You can also do a lot of the prep--chopping and even pre-cooking the vegetables--in advance. If everything is prepped, you can throw the dish together in the time it takes to cook the rice.
I call for yellow rice as an accompaniment to this dish because, outside of Catalonia, there’s not a lot of pasta produced in Spain. The Spanish do consume a lot of rice, however, and especially in their paella and arroz con pollo staple main courses. That being said, this dish is fantastic over pasta and you really should try it that way once.
This is also another of my famous ‘not too much meat’ dishes. I use lots of ‘bad’ things like cheese and butter but you won’t find me telling you to portion out Paul Bunyan sized servings of meat. We eat too much meat in general and an excess of it is bad for our health, our environment and our wallets. This dish provides protein through the milk and the cheese as well as the meat. Not that it is a diet dish by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe in another series of books we’ll tackle skinny stuff, but not in Carnal Cuisine. For better or worse to me sexy food tends to involve lots of forbidden things.
Ingredients: (for four servings)
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 roasted red pepper, thinly sliced
½ pound sliced mushrooms
8-10 cloves of roasted garlic smashed
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons Italian parsley, finely chopped and divided
1 teaspoon dried oregano (or 2 teaspoons fresh, chopped)
¾ pound of pork tenderloin sliced very thin
Bread crumbs to dredge the pork
Salt and pepper
2 cups milk
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons flour
1 cup grated Manchego cheese (or other--see above)
Sauté the onions in the olive oil. When they begin to color (turn a little golden) add the mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms have rendered all their water out and start to brown. Add the half the parsley, the oregano, garlic and roasted peppers. This can be done a day or even two in advance and kept in the refrigerator.
Make the cheese sauce. Combine butter and flour in a saucepan and cook until the mixture is bubbly (just a couple minutes). Whisk in the milk and a pinch of salt and pepper. Continue to whisk until mixture comes to a low boil and whisk in the cheese. Combine the cheese sauce with the vegetable mixture.
Salt and pepper the meat. Coat the sliced pork tenderloin (or chicken, also thin sliced) lightly in bread crumbs and quick fry them to golden in a pan with a small amount of olive oil. They will cook very quickly if you have sliced the meat thin enough.
Add the cheese sauce and heat through. Taste and correct the seasoning. If the mixture seems too thick, thin it with a small amount of milk or water. Serve over plain rice, yellow rice or pasta garnished with the reserved parsley.
You can certainly play with the herbs in this dish. If you have thyme, it makes a lovely accent. Dried Italian herb seasoning can be used instead of plain oregano (use a little more than 1 teaspoon, though, as it isn’t as strong as plain oregano.)
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Questions, comments, demands, needs, desires? Email Torri: [email protected]
Visit Torri's Carnal Cuisine blog for recipes and inspiration.
You can find K.C. Falls
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kcfallsbooks
On Twitter: https://twitter.com/kcfallsbooks
On Her Blog: kcfalls.com
By Email: [email protected]
And, if you enjoyed the book and love the recipes, please take a moment to leave a review.
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More from K.C. Falls & Torri D. Cooke
Year of the Billionaire Series
Knowing His Secret (Part 1)
Taking His Risk (Part 2)
Keeping His Promise (Part 3)
Carnal Cuisine Books
Sizzling in Singapore (Carnal Cuisine Novel)
Passion in Panama (Carnal Cuisine Novel)
Desire for Dinner (Carnal Cuisine Short Story)
Hunger for Halloween (Carnal Cuisine Short Story)
About K.C. Falls
The 'C' in my name stands for Cheyenne. Although you wouldn't know it by looking at me, I have a great grandparent who was a member of that Native American Tribe. Her people once lived in the very southeastern corner of Montana where I now make my home. I didn't always live in such a wide open space, though. I grew up in New York City. Much as I love the c
ity and admire what it takes to live there, I met a kindred spirit at Columbia University and together, we found a way to take our lives from the Big Apple to the Big Sky. We haven't regretted a moment.
We've got a smallish ranch where we raise cattle and keep a menagerie of other animals, too. Once or twice a year, we hire a 'ranch sitter' and take an urban vacation somewhere hitting all the restaurants, plays, museums and musical performances we can squeeze in. Then it's back to the wide open.
My inspiration comes from the hundreds (maybe thousands) of wonderful romances I have read since I was old enough to hide my "bodice rippers" under the covers and read with a flashlight away from my mother's prying eyes. I'm happy to have found a partner in Torri who can bring her passion for food to my world of passion for, well, passion. Together I think we make a very creative team. She gets all the credit for the culinary creativity that goes into our collaboration.
A writer finds creativity flourishes in solitude. My fantasy world is full of characters and stories lined up and waiting for me to bring them to life. I hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.
About Torri D. Cooke
I’ve been around the world seven times. I’ve eaten in some of the finest restaurants on the planet and some of the humblest as well. I’ve cooked for diplomats and princes as a private chef. I’ve slaved in a bitch-run deli in a strip mall and toiled as a cheesemonger in a gourmet grocery store. I’ve taught ethnic cuisine to bored, rich American housewives in Saudi Arabia and American comfort food cooking to Filipina housemaids in Singapore. I’ve served as the herb garden specialist for a renowned botanical garden. I’ve peeked inside the lives of the very rich as a personal chef. I’ve sweated on the line of fine white-tablecloth establishments in South Florida’s toniest districts. I know my way around the culinary world.
I've always felt that people who regularly work with fire and knives are sexy and a little dangerous. By its nature, cooking takes the ordinary and elevates it into something that is at best sublime and at worst, at least sustenance. Like sex, food is one of our basic instincts. We need food to survive as individuals and sex to survive as a species.
And, like food, sex can become the physical equivalent of shoving a McBoring burger into your face day after day. There is a place for McBoring burgers and I'm not saying they should be outlawed. By the same token, in the right time and space, sex can be of the less than earth-moving variety and still serve its purpose.
But not here. Not with me. I'm here to bring you the polar opposite of McBoring (burgers or sex).
My books are romances about culinarians--the grand and the humble--in exotic locations with a no-holds-barred erotic punch. I've decided to bring my considerable food experience into erotic romance by including recipes published both with the books and extras ones here, on my blog. All the recipes are as original as it is possible to be and are mentioned or prepared in the books. I say as original as can be because, unless you are el Bulli or one of his disciples, there's nothing really new under the sun when it comes to food. Hell, when you think about it, people have been pretty much fucking the same way since time began as well.
But what I'm saying is that the recipes are mine, I made 'em and I wrote 'em.
The characters in my books cook the way they make love--sensually, passionately, adventurously, and with devotion to the task. If you are looking for "five easy dinners from one pot" don't look here. If you want your lovers to play with bits "down there" and the curtain to draw before they even get naked--not here either.
The Condom Conundrum
We are aware that the issue of condoms in erotica is contentious. We claim our license as fiction writers to conjure up raw and unfettered sex. If you, dear reader, cannot bear the thought of our handsome hero and our lovely heroine going at it Trojan-less, feel free to add the following at the appropriate point in any of my sex scenes:
“He opened the Magnum wrapper with his teeth and sheathed himself with one hand, never missing a beat in pleasuring her. She shivered in anticipation at the crackle of the cellophane as she realized the moment of completion was upon her."