Chicken Ragu with Polenta for dinner...

Gus is not a very happy pup today... see, he was whisked away for a little trip to the vet this morning. It was time he went in for his "snip snip" and when we picked him up, he used those big beautiful blue eyes of his (yes, what you see below is his natural eye color!) to let us know exactly what he thought about his little procedure! I have a feeling he's not going to let us forget about this for awhile and guilt us into several pup treats.

I decided to keep myself busy from his wide-eyed stares and got to work on this Chicken Ragu with Polenta that I made for our dinner tonight.

For the polenta, I much prefer using coarse yellow cornmeal as I find the flavor is more defined and developed this way. It does take awhile, anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour depending on how slow you cook it, but if you don't have time for that, you can use instant polenta instead. If you haven't tried it the slow way though, I implore you to give it a try when you have some extra time so you can see for yourself - it is worth it. When the polenta was done, we dropped in a couple knobs of butter, a hefty shower of fresh grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and a handful of chopped parsley to freshen up the golden mass.

While the polenta was workin' away, I got started with the chicken ragu portion. I coarsely ground a combo of chicken breast and thigh meat to use in this dish - you could use strictly either, but we like a mix to lighten it up. I tossed the ground meat into a pot with a hot layer of olive oil and butter waiting to brown the bits up. To season, we added the obligatory salt and fresh ground black pepper, along with a spoonful or two of poultry seasoning. Once cooked through, we stirred in chopped fresh rosemary, a couple cloves worth of minced garlic, chopped onion, celery, bright shredded carrots and a bay leaf.

Cooked until the onion is soft, a few tablespoons of tomato paste are added - be sure to stir this around in the pot for at least a minute to allow the rich flavor of the paste to develop. For a punch of acidity, red wine is poured in, followed by chicken stock and fire-roasted whole tomatoes. While this bubbles away and reduces, you'll want to break up the tomatoes so they are well-distributed... you can do this with a sturdy wooden spoon, but I find using a potato masher makes this job much easier.

Once the sauce had reduced down, we spooned it over a flowing round of the creamy, soft polenta and added a few extra shreds of the sharp cheese on top. I ran out of time, so I probably didn't let the ragu thicken as much as it should have, but the extra juice that pooled around the edges wiggled its way into the polenta, adding extra flavor. The original recipe actually called for 2 pounds of meat with a serving size of only 4 - that is pretty darn excessive, at least for us. Even after reducing the meat to one and a half pounds, we had plenty enough for 6 good-sized servings! I'm also thinking if you have a bunch of turkey leftover from Thanksgiving, you could shred up the extra meat and toss it in here instead of using the chicken!

Recipes

Chicken Ragu with Polenta