Calories in Poletna or Cornmeal?!

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

Polenta (not poletna, but polenta) is cooked cornmeal mush. It may be cooked with just water, or it may be cooked with cream and/or cheese.

It can be made in two basic textures - the soft kind, and the kind that can be cut, like you had. The cut kind is made by cooking the polenta the night before, spreading it out on a sheet pan, and allowing it to set up. The next day, the cook cuts it into pieces. When you place your order, she cooks it a second time, sometimes by sauteeing or sometimes by baking, grilling, or deep frying.

The number of calories that were in your meal depends on a lot of factors. These factors include the volume of the polenta and what was cooked in it in addition to the cornmeal, as well as the method of recooking. It also depends on how much cheese was on the top, and how the veggies with it were cooked.

If your assessment of the size of the pieces was correct, you had about a cup of cooked polenta. That's definitely a reasonable portion. If it was cooked in water, it had about 200 calories. There may have been cream and/or cheese cooked in there too; they would add more calories. It may have been baked or grilled with very little oil, or it may have been fried in a lot of oil. This can contribute more calories.

Marinara may have very few calories, or it may be made with more olive oil, adding more calories. (Olive oil is the good kind of fat, though!) Artichokes, too, have very few calories on their own, but it depends on how much oil they were cooked with. Each tablespoon of oil contains about 120 calories.

Let's guess that there was some cream in the polenta, and some oil but not a ridiculous amount on the polenta and on the veg. Let's estimate we're around 450 calories so far, with polenta, sauce, and veg.

The biggest variable here is the cheese. Did you have one ounce of cheese? Two? Three? Each ounce of cheese contains about 100 calories. Let's guess you had about 2 ounces of cheese, for about 200 calories.

That brings your dish in around 650 calories in all. That's pretty light, for a restaurant meal!

Don't forget to add the calories of your soda or juice, and if you had the bread, butter, oil, and olives, and then dessert!