Here is another of our tutorials on how to deal with basic ingredients, which in this case is about cooking polenta from scratch. Polenta (or cornmeal) is incredibly popular in northern Italy, as it is a pretty perfect accompaniment to the kind of cuisine created in the mountain-sides of my country. However, this preparation is so delicious that it has managed to find its way to the tables of half the globe, if not all of it. If you don’t know exactly what polenta is, but you do have access to coarse cornmeal, then this recipe is the only thing that separates you from a phenomenal polenta dish.