Italian Polenta Cookies

One of the great joys of growing up Italian-American, I think specifically in the New York metropolitan area, is the special time with extended family children have on the regular. I’m talking dressing up a little, driving a couple of hours and going to eat an awkwardly timed meal (say, 3pm on a Sunday) at your great aunt’s house. Oftentimes in these situations there’s plastic on the furniture. There’s definitely nothing for children to play with. After dessert there may very well be card playing, but not the kind for kids. But most of all there’s the food, which is served in a pretty tight rotation of Old World favorites and standbys. Some of the most nostalgic for me are the cookies – always from the Italian bakery in town and always softer than they should be because they’re stale.

This is the freshly baked version of my favorite of those cookies – the slightly lemony S’s, made with polenta for a bit of textural interest. And while they honestly could not be simpler to prepare, their shape does lend them a bit of fanciness, and a number of people asked me rather incredulously how I had gotten them that shape. Answer: not by magic, but by piping bag! Gets them every time.

I think you can probably tell, but these are not the cookies you unveil for your dessert finale for guests, unless, of course, you’re an 85-year-old Italian nonna, in which case you can get away with just about anything. But what they do better than, I would argue, almost any other cookie is accompany a piping hot cup of tea or coffee in the mid-afternoon, which is how I enjoyed a great many of them. And I’m happy to report, they also get better with age! Now, as discussed earlier, not TOO much age, but a day or two after I baked these I was enjoying them more than I had when they were straight out of the oven, and that’s saying a lot.

As we’re on the topic of baking, I do have some sad news to report that I am still coming to terms with. Last week, while my building’s boiler was being replaced, the crew discovered and reported a small gas leak. So I am now, very unfortunately, completely without gas for the foreseeable future, which means no baking, no roasting, no cooking anything that I can’t manage on my new (but sad) double hotplate. I’m pretty devastated but in the meantime while I wait for the gas to be turned back on / search for a new apartment with a larger kitchen (!), I’m going to do my best to still deliver you interesting recipes despite the current limitations. I hope you understand!