Polenta medallions with mushrooms and smoked provola

Ingredients:

• 100 gr of dry porcini mushrooms
• 300 gr of polenta
• 200 gr of smoked provola
• 4 tablespoons  of extra virgin olive oil
• garlic, salt and pepper to taste

Put the dry mushrooms in a bowl with enough warm water to cover them for about 20 minutes, to make them soft. When the 20 minutes are over,  squeeze the mushrooms, keep aside their water after you have filtered it from any residual soil; coarsely chop them and put them in a pan with the clove of garlic and the oil to simmer on a low flame for few minutes . Remove the garlic and let them to cool.

Cook the polenta and when is still warm and soft pour it into a greased baking dish making sure the thickness of of the polenta is about 2 cm high.  Let it  cool at room temperature; as it becomes hard enough to be cut, with a round pastry cutter make some disk shape with the polenta and in the centre of each disk make a small cavity with a teaspoon. Lightly brush the top of the polenta disks with some oil and fill the cavity with the mushrooms and the diced provola. Bake in a preheated oven for 10 minutes at 200° and serve hot.