SOUTH COUNTY — In a yearly tradition for more than 25 years, locals have been gathering at California Gourmet Pizza during the fall and winter months for polenta and stew.
Every second Tuesday of the month, hungry customers can find John Sargenti making the dish. Sargenti is known throughout Salinas Valley for his skill at making polenta. Making the dish for large groups is serious business.
Sargenti doesn’t go to a grocery store for the amounts of dry polenta he uses. Instead, he drives up north to his distributor located in San Francisco. He buys from Guistos, a small family-run bakery and mill. He drives up and buys a pallet filled with of bags of the dry polenta, roughly 800 pounds, and hauls it down to South County in his truck.
During the feed, he can be found stirring a giant pot of polenta and talking to the people who have arrived early to get their favorite table to enjoy their lunch.
In a year’s time, Sargenti said he cooks upwards of 3,000 pounds of polenta for different functions throughout the year — weddings, funerals, birthdays, family reunions, etc. He even competes in the yearly Arroyo Seco Polenta and Stew Cook-off. He makes anywhere on average from 25 pounds to 40 pounds of polenta for any given event, and some events call for over 100 pounds. For the monthly feed, Sargenti makes four large serving pans, which is roughly 30 pounds of polenta for the luncheon.
“We do this every second Tuesday of the month,” Sargenti said. “We normally get around a hundred people or so.”
People drive from throughout South County for the feed. Some of the people at last week’s feed came down from Salinas.
Polenta takes a long time to cook, typically simmering for about 45 minutes, with Sargenti almost constantly stirring, which he said is necessary for even gelatinization of the starch. Polenta is made up of cornmeal, butter, cheese and water and is cooked into a creamy porridge, though a cheese-less version is also available. It is served on a plate with beef stew over the top. The dish comes with a green salad and is garnished with blue cheese crumbles if so desired.
Cooked polenta can be shaped into balls, patties or sticks, and then fried in oil, baked or grilled until golden brown; fried polenta is called crostini di polenta or polenta fritta. This type of polenta became particularly popular in southern Brazil after northern Italians immigrated there.
Lorena Ramirez from California Gourmet Pizza staff makes the stew on Monday night, and on those evenings the restaurant is filled with the aroma of the hearty beef stew.
Ramirez has been making the stew for about six years and had never tried polenta and stew before she took on the task
“Lorena has made some fine adjustments to the recipe; we got some good compliments,” Sargenti said.
For those who missed the feed this month, the next and final one for this season is Tuesday, May 9, at noon at California Gourmet Pizza, located on West Street in Soledad. The meal can be eaten in or taken to go.
