Tag: polenta

Polenta Torta with Eggplant Sauce

Polenta Torta with Eggplant Sauce

Polenta Torta with Eggplant Sauce
Polenta Torta with Eggplant Sauce

Polenta Torta with Eggplant Sauce

Polenta Torta with Eggplant Sauce
Jonah, Sophie, Johnny, and Mo at the table and ready to eat!

Last weekend, our friends (and newlyweds) Sophie and Johnny were in town. Sophie and Jonah were housemates senior year of college, along with the lovely Maureen (Mo). So we invited the three of them (Mo, Sophie, and Johnny) over for dinner for a little reunion. Mo is a vegetarian, so I immediately went to “Plenty,” that vegetarian cookbook that we are quickly falling in love with. I found a recipe for some eggplant sauce, to be served on top of sweet corn polenta. Alas, it is not corn season, so I decided to use the eggplant sauce to make a polenta torta (recipe found in Alice Waters’ “The Art of Simple Food”). It was a really simple dish, and while we didn’t execute it to the best of our abilities (our dish was too big which made the layering hard) it was still very good. The mozzarella brought a nice pop to the dish, and was really stringy which I love. The eggplant sauce, as I said above, was nice and creamy. It was kind of like a layered pizza, except no crust, just polenta.

Polenta Torta with Eggplant Sauce

Ingredients

Eggplant Sauce

2/3 cup vegetable oil
1 medium eggplant, cut into 3/4 inch pieces
2 tsp tomato paste
1/4 cup white wine
1 cup chopped peeled tomatoes (we used canned, and I ended up using the whole can just to yield a little more sauce)
6 1/2 Tbl water
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp sugar
1 Tbl chopped oregano

Polenta

4 cups water
1 cup corn grits (polenta)
1 tsp salt
3 Tbl olive oil
1/2 cup parmesan cheese (freshly grated)

Polenta Torta

4 cups polenta (hopefully the above recipe yields 4 cups… we didn’t end up measuring)
2 cups tomato sauce (or in this case, Eggplant sauce)
1 cup parmesan cheese (freshly grated)
1/2 pound (2 medium balls) fresh mozzarella

Instructions

Eggplant Sauce

Heat the oil in a large saucepan, add the eggplant. Cook the eggplant on medium heat for ~15 minutes, or until it’s soft and nicely brown. When the eggplant is cooked, drain as much oil from the pan and discard it. Now add the tomato paste and stir it into the eggplant. Cook for about 2 minutes, then add the wine and cook for another minute or so. Now add everything else (tomatoes, water, salt, sugar, and oregano) and cook for another 5-10 minutes to let the flavors deepen. You probably want to keep the pot covered so the sauce doesn’t cook down too much. On the other hand, if it’s looking a little too liquid for your liking, cook it uncovered so it can cook down a little bit. At this point, you can set this aside until you are ready to use the sauce. I made this sauce the morning of the meal, and actually left it on the stove, covered, for many hours.

The great thing about this sauce is the creaminess that the eggplant brings to it. When eggplant has been cooked this long, it kind of falls apart, and I love it when that happens.

Polenta

Now, I’ll be honest with you: I didn’t cook the polenta. Jonah did while I was getting in my workout at the bouldering gym. So I’ll relay what he did to you, but I don’t have any insider tips because I wasn’t there. But here’s what he did: Boil the 4 cups of water in a saucepan. When it’s boiling, whisk in the corn grits and the salt. Now, turn down the heat and whisk until the polenta is suspended in the water and no longer sitting on the bottom of the pan. Cook for 30 minutes – 1 hour (the longer the better, according to Alice Waters), stirring occasionally. Don’t let the polenta get above a low simmer. If at any point the polenta seems to be getting too dry, add a little water. Once the polenta is all cooked, add the olive oil and parmesan cheese.

Polenta Torta

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Oil a baking dish (like I said, ours was too big, so keep this in mind when picking what dish to use), and spread 1 1/3 cups of polenta out over the bottom of the dish. Over the polenta, spread half of the eggplant tomato sauce, then half the mozzarella cheese, and sprinkle half the parmesan cheese. Repeat: spread 1 1/3 cups polenta, the other half of the sauce, mozzarella, and parmesan cheese over the dish. End with a layer of the polenta. Because our dish was too big, we only did one layer, which was ok, but it didn’t look as nice as it could/would have if we’d done it right.

Once it’s all layered up, you can put it in the oven for 30 minutes, or until it’s hot and bubbling. Allow to cool for a bit before serving and eating. Enjoy!

Lemon-Garlic Shrimp and Creamy Polenta

Lemon-Garlic Shrimp and Creamy Polenta

Lemon-Garlic Shrimp and Creamy Polenta

Welcome to the first post on Serious Crust!

Tonight, I got home from work and after about an hour of lazing around the apartment, Jonah and I realized it was probably time to figure out what we were going to make for dinner. We had done a lot of cooking yesterday evening (recipes coming soon), and so were a little burnt out; We needed something easy and delicious.

Enter Lemon-Garlic Shrimp and Creamy Polenta: I handled the shrimp while Jonah did the polenta. I would say it took us between 20-30 minutes, and it tasted so good.

Lemon Garlic Shrimp and Creamy Polenta

Serves 2, with leftovers | 20-30 minutes

Ingredients

Lemon Garlic Shrimp

1 Tbl butter
3/4 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined, tails intact
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
a pinch of chili powder (we had some leftover from last night’s meal, but you can also use cayenne or paprika)
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
1 Tbl chopped parsley

Creamy Polenta

1 tube polenta (you know, those weird looking things at the grocery store)
a little bit of: milk, parmesan cheese, salt, pepper

Instructions

Lemon Garlic Shrimp

Season shrimp with a little salt and pepper. Melt butter in a pan over medium-high heat. Add shrimp, garlic, and chili powder. Cook until shrimp are pink on both sides, about 4 minutes. Don’t overcook them! They can get dry really quickly, so keep an eye on them. When they’re cooked right they’re really juicy and tender instead of chewy. When the shrimp are cooked, put them on a plate to the side. Turn heat down to low, add lemon juice, parsley, and a tablespoon of water and stir. Add shrimp back into the pan to coat it in the sauce.

Creamy Polenta

Put polenta in a pot, cook on medium heat. Add other ingredients until you like the consistency and flavor. Easy, no?

Serve together!