MBS or polenta with white cheese and cream

This is a traditional meal in my country. In the past, on the countryside, people were eating this very often. The corn was available to everyone and the corn porridge of polenta was eaten instead of bread, next to almost every meal. Nowadays we eat this as a starter or as a light meal. It’s very popular in Romania under the name MBS, mamaliga cu branza & smantana in Romanian, which means corn porridge with cheese and cream. As I mentioned, we use fresh cheese, which is very soft, similar to quark cheese or the Italian "ricotta", and on top we add sour cream, but in Romania this is similar to the crème fraîche. I adapted the recipe using normal white cheese, for example feta cheese, and cottage cheese, quark cheese or ricotta. So let’s start!

Prep: 10 min

Cook: 30 min

Difficulty: easy

Ingredients for 3-4 persons:

For the corn porridge

1 l water

250 g corn flour

1 tsp salt

40 g butter

For the cheese cream

250-300 g feta cheese

500 g cottage cheese, quark or ricotta

1 fried egg for each person

Method

Bring the water and salt to a boil. Stir the corn flour into the boiling water. Bring to boil again and reduce the heat. Simmer for about 30 min, mixing from time to time. When the corn flour is soft, add the butter and mix until it’s melted. Then pour the porridge into a bowl.

Meanwhile, prepare the cheese cream: mash the feta cheese and mix it with the other type of cheese. If you use ricotta I recommend you to add some cream (sour or crème fraîche).

Serve advise: put on the plate first the cheese cream, then a few spoons of polenta and on top, the fried egg.

My tips:

1. You can use more or less corn flour and then the consistence of the porridge will be different. Some people prefer it harder, some softer.

2. For a light meal you can skip adding the butter to the polenta and the fired egg too.

3. You can add some cream (crème fraîche or sour cream) to the cheese mixture in order to make it more creamy and tastier.

4. Don’t panic if a layer of polenta will form on the bottom of the pan. Just mix the polenta from time to time and ignore that layer. You can clean the pan easily after: just leave it a while with cold water inside, before cleaning.

Enjoy it!

Have a quick view to the bellow movie to see how I'm doing this recipe. For more video-recipes, subscribe on my Youtube channel.

#polenta #easy #quick #lightmeals #cornflour #dairyproducts #healthyfood #eggs