squash and polenta two ways

Polenta has become one of my go to meals. It's quick, easy and filling, and it takes on delicious flavors from other ingredients really well. I've talked a couple of times about how it's fabulous with sausage (which reminds me that I should make polenta with chorizo again soon), and there's no mistaking how well it pairs with cheeses, like parmesan, goat or blue. Polenta also plays nice with lighter add-ins, like the time I chopped up and added maybe a half cup or so of parsley, which is often thought of a garnish but actually is delicious in its own right. Today, I have two very different takes on polenta with winter squash.

dry fried garlic scapes with chorizo and polenta

One of the funny things you get from your CSA at the beginning of the season is garlic scapes, the little shoots that grow our from the bulbs. They are milder that the cloves, and they are only available for a short window of time in the late spring.

I like scapes, but aside from dicing them up for coleslaw or salads, I'm often at a loss of what to do with them. That's why I took note when I saw this recipe for dry fried garlic scapes.

buttery mushrooms and parsleyed polenta

Here, Gourmet magazine and Smitten Kitchen combine forces to bring you a predictably awesome dish of garlicy broiled mushrooms. Really, both of them are pretty much food gospel for me, so whenever Deb talks up something from Gourmet, it always goes to the top of my "to-make" list.

(If you know me, you won't be surprised to know that I have an obscenely long "to-make" list. And also "to eat at" list. And "to read" list. And "movie-to-watch" list. It all springs from my mild obsessive compulsive tendencies.)

Anyway. Food blog. Right.

Mushrooms and butter and garlic oh my!

Really, it doesn't get any simpler or tastier than this. Clean off your mushrooms and toss them in a pan with minced garlic, butter, and capers. Roast in a 450˚ oven for 20 minutes. Sprinkle with lemon juice and chopped parsley for a rich but easy side dish.



I served mine with some creamy polenta and some more parsley, but I'm sure it'd be even better with crusty bread. Any time you soak up a yummy sauce with bread the meal becomes 46% more enjoyable. Scientific fact. Seriously.

purple cabbage shallot puree, polenta and steak with brown beer mustard sauce

This dinner was definitely one of the best things I have cooked this year. From left to right we have a nice rare steak with a beer and grainy mustard sauce, creamy polenta with parsley, and a purple cabbage and shallot puree. I won't beat around the bush. It. Was. Awesome.



This meal came about when I saw this recipe. Unlike the gloppy looking purplish goo that I came up with, the photo that accompanied original recipe was so damn pretty that I couldn't believe it wasn't actually a dessert. I when I realized that it was actually the prettiest cabbage that I've ever seen, I knew what I was making with some of my seemingly endless supply of purple food co-op cabbage. (Seriously, that stuff doesn't go bad, and it multiplies like Jesus with the loaves and fishes when you try to chop it up!)

While my dish didn't quite compare visually, I am happy to report that it was super delicious. I'd even go so far as to say that this may be the tastiest cabbage preparation I've ever eaten. The cabbage is cooked slowly with plenty of chopped shallots in some olive oil, so everything turns sweet and mellow as the shallots caramelize. Then you blend everything up with some milk or half and half to make a nice smooth puree.

I am telling you, this was such a pleasant surprise. I never knew that cabbage could be so silky and sweet. I couldn't stop eating it. And, even if it wasn't as pretty as I thought it would be, I definitely enjoyed having something purple on my plate. What can I say, sometimes I am girly like that.



I used this nice Belgian beer to make a sauce for my steak. I swear to you that I got the idea for a beer and mustard pan sauce from some recipe I saw on Serious Eats or perhaps some other food blog, but I can't seem to find the original anywhere. So I guess I will just have to take all the credit. Perhaps I merely dreamed that I read about a delicious steak, seared on high heat and then left to rest while the pan is deglazed with a nice ale and some grainy mustard. Sounds like a pretty sweet dream to me!



The steak was perfectly rare on the inside with a nice crust on the outside, and the beer and mustard sauce thickened up into a wonderfully rich glaze. It was very easy to make up this sauce, and it was a good way to scrape up all those lovely brown bits that are left behind in the pan after you sear the steak. A pan sauce is such a great thing, and I really should try to make them more often.



Paired with some easy, cheesy polenta and a nice green parsley garnish, the steak and cabbage were a great dinner, and one of my 2011 dining highlights to date!

sausage and polenta/ginger fried rice

I'm going to start off this entry with a totally superfluous plug for Mark Bittman, who many of you are probably familiar with if you have even a passing interest in food and cooking. If you don't know Bittman, he writes both a column (The Minimalist) and a blog, (Bitten), for the New York Times. He's a fountain of food knowledge, and he can quite literally tell you how to cook everything. Today's entries cover two of his recently published recipes, which cover all manner of cuisines and always sound delicious and simple and like exactly what you want to make for dinner.

The first is the incredibly easy creamy polenta with sausage and parmesan. The recipe can be found here, along with an accompanying article in which Bittman attempts to take the fear out of polenta.

creamy polenta with sausage and parmesan

As exotic as it sounds, polenta is really only cornmeal cooked in hot water, and it makes a great change of pace from rice, pasta or potatoes. Nathan and I have made several batches of polenta in the past few months, and at first I tried adding the polenta to boiling water, as I had seen recommended online. This method requires a steady hand and great deal of patience, as the cornmeal will clump if you add too much at once and do not stir constantly. Bittman suggests mixing the cornmeal and cold water into a slurry and then cooking it, adding water as needed. This is definitely the way to go. After cooking for about 20 minutes, I finished off the polenta with butter and grated romano cheese (which I almost always use in lieu of parmesan), and served it with some sliced sweet Italian sausage, making sure to scrape up the pan drippings for a sauce. Served with a salad, this was an excellent and extremely easy dinner.

simple and full of flavor

The second Bittman dinner I've recently prepared is his ginger fried rice. I'd been wanting to make for a few weeks now, especially after it was featured in another one of my favorite cooking blogs only days after I first found the recipe. The reason I had put it off was that I didn't have ginger, but I came home one night and was pleasantly surprised to find that Laura had bought some. How serendipitous!

ginger fried rice topped with a fried egg

Of course, I still had to switch quite a few things around based on other missing ingredients, but that's par for the course when I'm in the kitchen. I used scallions instead of leeks, vegetable oil instead of peanut oil, and toasted sesame seeds instead of sesame oil. I do love some sesame oil though, so I intend to buy some and make this again some time. I also don't have soy sauce, but I never like that too much anyway. Other than those substitutions, I pretty much followed the recipe. Minced and fried the garlic and ginger with some sesame seeds, and then set them aside. I then fried up the scallions until they started to crisp up slightly, and added the rice. I cooked the rice until it got stickier and browner, because that's how I like my fried rice. I seasoned it with salt and pepper and topped with the garlic, ginger, sesame seeds and a runny egg fried sunny side up. I won't say it couldn't have used a splash of soy, and I might have used a few too many sesame seeds, but all in all I was satisfied. Not bad Mr. Bittman, not bad.

UPDATE 6/1/10: Here is another photo of this fried rice, with an unbroken yolk and the addition of sliced mushrooms. I also had the proper sesame oil and soy sauce. The former is a nice touch, but without the latter I would not bother making fried rice ever again. It really does make a world of difference.