Milanese osso bucco with polenta

Attempted to do my first ever osso bucco with polenta. Had The Silver Spoon by my side, a benchful of good ingredients, and the best intentions, all ready to go.
However, things did not go well.
According to The Silver Spoon, I had to brown the veal pieces whole, coated in flour, and then pour in only a few tablespoons of stock, cover it and let simmer for half an hour. Followed all instructions, but remember thinking "That's not much stock: it doesn't even cover the veal. Oh well". When I peeked under the lid after half an hour, the veal was all contracted and becoming tougher by the second. I suspect this had something to do with the relative lack of liquid in there. At this point I became cranky. I yanked the veal out of there, threw in some more stock and a dollop of passata, and cranked up the fire to reduce this rapidly into a passable sauce.
I was definitely cranky.
Meanwhile...the bloody polenta. In hindsight, I should have read the recipe book BEFORE the evening of cooking, BEFORE going out and buying the first polenta that came into view (Woolworths Naytura brand, incidentally). Had the polenta sitting there on the bench, started reading the book. Apparently polenta takes at least 45 minutes of nonstop stirring to be ready.
Fine, I thought, that won't kill me, it will be character-building. I shall stir and stir and make the world's most awesome polenta.
At 6.30 I began the stirrage. By 6.50 I was ready to throw the polenta out the window, but despite the aching wrist, I started to become suspicious. Polenta looked awfully cooked. Thick, gluggy, smoothish, bright yellow. Wary of the warning in The Silver Spoon, "the longer it is cooked, the more digestible the polenta will be", and not relishing the thought of a solid polenta-mass sitting in our stomachs, I persevered.
No instructions on the back of the Woolies packet. Just "Ingredients: 100% maize". Thanks, that was totally helpful, stupid conglomerate home-brand jerks. Although they did give quantities for 6, which I divided in half to allow for us two plus leftovers for lunches. That gave me 250g of raw polenta to be cooked, which was enough for about 400 people once it had swelled and absorbed all that water. Obviously the Woolies test kitchen people all eat like front-row forwards.
Stir, stir, stir.
How I stirred that polenta.
At 7.05, that was it, indigestion or not. I dragged the pot off the stove, threw a dollop of polenta on the bench, and gingerly poked it with a fork. Seemed to be right: looks right, I guess, not that I can really remember how it's supposed to look or anything. Took a test bite: seems fine to me. I ain't stirring any more, anyway.
Back to the veal sauce, furiously reducing on the back burner. At this point, feeling extremely annoyed, hot, cranky, sore-wristed and disappointed that I screwed up something that took only half a paragraph to describe in the cookbook.
Time for emergency salvage routine.
A spoonful of polenta in the bottom of a bowl, the chopped-up and trimmed veal pieces on top, a swirl of sauce, and some grated lemon rind and chopped flat-leaf parsley. Passable. The veal was still pretty tough, but the sauce tasted reasonable and nobody died from the polenta.

There is no way, though, that I will be trying that again in the near future.

Meanwhile I have half a kilo of rock-solid cooked polenta in the fridge. Am considering options.