POLENTA CRUSTED SNAPPER WITH GREEN OLIVE TAPENADE

In the beginning the mesoamericans grew corn. In the 16th century a bloke called Chris sailed from Spain and took some corn back to his masters - along with chocolate, avocado, sweet potato, tomato, zucchini, turkey and other goodies. The Italians saw that the Spanish were growing corn and thought they would grow it themselves. Some Italian got the idea of drying and grinding corn and then cooking it into a gruel, a soft corn porridge. Some Italians migrated to Australia after World War 2 and introduced their corn porridge, which they called polenta. And a cook called Greg decided to use the uncooked coarse-ground polenta as a crust on fish and chicken. That is centuries of history condensed into a few sentences.

POLENTA CRUSTED SNAPPER WITH GREEN OLIVE TAPENADE