You know those foods you eat a bunch of for a while then forget about? This is one of those. It wasn’t until I saw the polenta fries at Hungry Tiger, Too that I remembered my polenta dish. And how much I love it.
Nothing special, really, this is just polenta with a bunch of herbs in it, pan-fried until just crispy on the outside in very little Earth Balance, topped with what I refer to as parsley pesto for lack of a better name (parsley, roasted garlic, nutritional yeast, salt, olive oil, and Earth Balance to stiffen it up a bit). I served it up with some marinara too, which I hadn’t done before, but Hungry Tiger did it and the flavors worked surprisingly well. Polenta’s just easy that way, I guess.
Polenta’s great in that you can cook it up and stick it in the fridge to set…for days. Then that night you don’t really feel so much like cooking, the polenta’s just sitting there, waiting to be sliced up and warmed up.
And to think, this is that grainy stuff I use to keep my pizza crust from sticking to the stone.
Wait! That’s how you keep the pizza crust from sticking?!!
yeah. before i put sauce or anything on the crust, i very messily shoot dry polenta (cheap as hell when you buy it bulk) under it to make sure it’s good and slidy on my board. whatever mess i make, i figure it’s better than getting ripped-up pizza all over my oven when trying to make the transfer or burned-up crust off my stone.
i think the other key to keep it from sticking to the stone is having the oven preheated–often i skip preheating, but not here.