Chickpea polenta, shrimp, spicy sauce

Before corn arrived in Europe, polenta originally meant any hulled grain boiled as porridge, sometimes cooled solid cut and fried. I saw Anne Burrell come the closest to what I've been doing here than anybody else so far. She used chickpea flour, I didn't know they made that but I still do not understand why she would buy it when they would have dry chickpeas already, or should, and a coffee mill already too. So a restaurant already has the elements for chickpea flour right there in their pantry. Why add another specific thing? That is not restaurant minimalism shopping conservation, a pervading master chef concern. But then she added a tin of chickpeas and processed those too, for bean texture, and from my point of view that removed the need for the flour, she could have made her polenta from the tinned beans since she bothered to open those. But she wanted both and told us why.

If you fail to stir as the water boils it will lump. It is very odd how powders do that, lump solidly on the bottom and wet on top. Without serious long whisking or further processing those lumps will never come out. They're cooked that way, gelatinized in that shape of a clump. Turns out, that is the same texture as a cooked bean.  So if you fail to stir it properly as it boils, the powder on the bottom gelatinizes into solid cooked bean texture, whisked to the texture of bean chunks, the same texture from incompletely processed chickpeas from a tin.

Mum says her potato flakes are so authentic they even have lumps. Same thing. 

This texture and flavor is wonderful. It tends to puff a bit, as it cools and solidifies it can be cut through cleanly with a fork and its spongy texture resembles bread. I honestly do not know why all of these beans are not more popular this way. I was thinking about it all day, as breakfast with eggs but when I finally got around to it late at night the eggs were omitted and the whole plate down to the last drop was even more delicious than I had been craving, and the whole time I was eating it I was thinking, "Wow, this is amazing," and planning to have it the next meal too.