Polenta, called “kachamak” in Bulgarian, was a staple in my mom’s cuisine, together with “mamaliga”. Now if you google it or try to translate to English, both kachmak and mamaliga translate to polenta. It also will tell you that mamaliga is the Romanian word for polenta. However, these two made by mom, were not quite the same.
In my mom’s cuisine mamaliga was done with corn flour and kachamak with corn meal, which is coarsely ground corn (you still see the little yellow grains, bigger than what one can buy in most supermarkets here, but is probably similar to the ubiquitous “grits” found in the southern USA). As far as I remember mamaliga was much thicker than kachamak, which is closer to the Italian polenta. It makes sense if one is made from flour and the other from much coarser corn meal. My mom would garnish her mamaliga with paprika fried in sunflower oil, but will add the Bulgarian feta cheese to the kachamak.
The other day my Bulgarian friend Slavka send me photos of her making kachamak, which I translated here as polenta Bulgarian style. (All photos for this post are provided by Slavka Angelova).
Ingredients:
1 cup corn meal
1 cup cold water
1 cup hot water
About 300 g crumbled Bulgarian feta
Optional: Ground pepper, paprika or chili powder
About 80 g butter
Salt to taste or you can add chicken stock dissolved in the hot water.
Preparation
Melt the butter in a pan.
Mix well 1 cup of corn flower with 1 cup of cold water and pour in the pan.
Add 1 cup of hot water and stir for about 5 min until it is done. Transfer to a serving bowl, and add the crumbled feta cheese.
You can serve it like that or stir the feta in the polenta while it is still warm. You can garnish with ground pepper or paprika too.
Variance
If you use corn flour (the more finely ground corn) it will be thicker in consistency and can be sliced. Melt some butter and add paprika or chili pepper to the melted butter (you can use oil instead), stir and pour it over the polenta.
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