This is a recipe we made up ourselves. The name is actually something between Lasagna and Polenta, the best we came up with was LaPonta... Pretty cute if you ask me!

 
  • 500 grams Polenta
  • 2 liters water
  • 5 cups fresh tomato sauce
  • 2 cups chopped lamb ribs
  • 6 cloves garlic, sliced
  • 4 tbsp cooking oil
  • 1 cup leeks, diced
  • ½ cup onions, diced
  • 1 tsp green pepper ( also known as poivre vert)
  • 3 tbsp butter
  • 4 tbsp flour
  • 4 cups milk

√ To Prepare the Bechamel Sauce:
In a skillet, warm up the cooking oil.
Add the garlic and mix until white, then add the onions and leeks.
Sautee until they start getting light brown.
Smash a few of the green peppers and add those and the whole ones to the base.
Now add the butter and mix until melted.
Add the flour and make sure no bunches of flour form, mix until it gets a little darker.
Add the milk and mix gently for awhile until it starts to boil.
Continue to mix until the mixture becomes thicker (remember that the consistency you have when the sauce is hot is different from that when it is cold)


To Prepare the Polenta:

Put the water to boil in a medium sized pan and add the salt.
Once the water is boiling slowly add the polenta flour little-by-little, mixing constatly.
Reduce the fire to minimum and continue mixing.
Be careful, once the flour has absorbed all the water it will splatter, so you may want to keep the lid of the pan in from of you while mixing with a long wooden spoon.
Mix for about 3-5 minutes then turn fire off.
To tell if the polenta is ready or not take a bit of it from the pan with a teaspoon and try it. 
If its ready you won't feel little hard bits.


To Prepare the Tomato Sauce:

Warm up some tomato sauce you've already prepared ( See recipe for Fresh Tomato Sauce).
In this recipe I'm using lamb ribs that were leftovers from a Sunday lunch and I'm simply carving out the meat and chopping it to pieces.


To set up the "LaPonta":

Now is the part that gives this recpe its name. We'll prepare the polenta in the same style we'd prepare a lasagna, like so:

Spread a spoonfull of tomato sauce in the bottom of a large pyrex.
Spoon over this a layer of the polenta (about 1/2 inch think).
Over this make a layer of the bechamel sauce.
Repeat the layer of polenta.
Top off with the tomato sauce, sprinkle the meat on top of it and bake for about 15 minutes so all the juices become one with the polenta.

Serve hot!
 
 Servings/Yield
 
8 servings