Sautéed Polenta with Sausage and Mushroom Sauce

Dudes, this pan-fried polenta recipe is good stuff. The typically reliable Alton Brown brings us a good go-to recipe yet again. The method seemed somewhat unorthodox, starting it out on the stovetop and finishing it in the oven, but it worked quite well. The polenta was creamy and delicious!

Grilled on my cast-iron griddle, topped with a sausage and mushroom ragu, and sprinkled with some grated Parmesan... mmmm.

Creamy Mushroom and Polenta Lasagna

Wow, this creamy mushroom and polenta lasagna was awesome... super simple since it's made with rolls of pre-cooked polenta and some other ingredients that I generally have on hand (mushrooms, onion, garlic, milk, a little bit of cream cheese), but so good. I think the fresh nutmeg in the cream sauce is what really made it special.

Tarragon Chicken Pot Pie with Gruyere Polenta Crust

I got some tarragon from the CSA last week and was looking for a way to use it up. This Rachael Ray (yeah, I know) chicken pot pie recipe looked good, and we had most of the ingredients on hand, save the quick-cooking polenta, which I sent Tim to get on his way home from work.

Unbeknownst to Tim, quick-cooking polenta is not equivalent to pre-cooked polenta, which is the stuff that comes in the tube. Oh well. It worked anyway- I just sliced up the tube of polenta, sprinkled the Gruyere on top and put the whole thing on top of the pot pie insides.

Overall, I give the flavors of this recipe 2 thumbs up. However, I think I would go about making the roux a little differently than Rachael suggests- it was very watery.

Parmesan Polenta (with sausage and tomatoes)

I tried my hand at making polenta again, this time with delicious results. 4 ingredients, totally simple, but super creamy. I recommend using a whisk, not a fork as recommended by the recipe.
Served with Italian sausage cooked with garlic, dried basil, a can of diced tomatoes, fresh parsley.

Cheesy Polenta

Sorry about the delay in posting... I have lots of meals, recipes and photos to blog about, but no computer on which to put the photos currently stored on my camera (due to the fact that I spilled 1/2 of a can of coconut milk directly on the keyboard of my laptop). More to come on that later.

So, yes, a photoless entry on... polenta.

My friend Sean (Dr. Sean, if you will), came over for dinner last night. I wanted to put something together to eat that wouldn't take very long, so I decided to make a variation on this easy white bean, greens and tomato recipe (which I made a few weeks ago using swiss chard, but made with a bag of baby spinach tonight because that's what was in the fridge), and to serve it over cheesy polenta for some heft.

I only had regular cornmeal, and wasn't sure that it would work for making polenta, so I turned to Google and foodnetwork.com, both of which assured me that it was possible. The first time I Googled my question, I actually typed "making cornmeal out of regular cornmeal" instead of "making polenta out of regular cornmeal," which, as you might guess, did not turn up the results I wanted.

Anywho... I (and by I, I mean Sean, my trusty doctorate-earning sous chef) ended up following the polenta part of this recipe, doubling it for a larger group. Pretty good! We think that you can cook it longer if you want a thicker, more solid polenta.