Baked Polenta with Swiss Chard

The next couple of weeks are probably going to be replete with green posts - the last PO box had many varieties of greens which we quickly ran through and I stocked up on more today.

Life has seriously been enriched with spinach and chard and collard and rutabaga greens - all goodness. It has been a series of fun experiments trying to find different ways to cook greens. There are daals and curries and sambars and sautes - all of which are awesome, but this time I was really seeking a dish that did not involve extended cooking of the chard.

Swiss chard is a power food - it belongs to the Chenopod family - shared by beets and quinoa. And it is chockful of nutrients like Vitamin C, potassium and magnesium. Like with several other greens, long term cooking (20 minutes or more) ostensibly depletes the nutrients by as much as 50%. To work around this, I chose to flash cook the chard and bake it with the polenta to let the flavors blend and settle rather than go in for extended cooking that could lead to flavorful yet limp chard.

Baked Polenta with Swiss Chard
Green, yet good!
:)

Servings: 2

1.5 cups cornmeal
2.5 cups of water
5-6 cloves of garlic - smashed
2 cups of shredded swiss chard
1 t cayenne powder
1 T olive oil salt

Heat the oven to 350 F.
Mix the cornmeal with 1 cup of water till smooth and set aside.
Heat the remaining 1.5 cups of water to a roiling boil along with salt to taste.
Turn down the heat to simmer and add the cornmeal paste slowly, stirring constantly to blend it in.
Continue to stir the polenta for another 5-6 minutes till fully cooked.
(Add a few more spoons of water if needed)

Heat the oil in a wok and saute the garlic till browned.
Add the chard and saute for 1-2 minutes.
Place the polenta along with the swiss chard in a baking pan.
Stir in the cayenne and season with more salt if needed.
Bake covered for 5-6 minutes.

Perfect accompaniment: Olive tapenade

Good? Weird? Odd?

Very good! The chard picked up the garlic flavors, yet retained its vibrance. And the polenta seemed really happy to be with the chard. Can't ask for more :)

Roasted vegetables + Spicy polenta = close to perfect meal

I could term this a perfect meal, but nothing's perfect, right? :) Wait, the last post was about a perfect seafood meal ... hmm, guess that was just marred by the totally imperfect picture!

I've kind of rediscovered The Complete Cookbook in the last few weeks - this is one of my oldest cookbooks and I've used several recipes from it, but it seems like I've also skimmed through a lot of other truly mouthwatering recipes. As I was flipping through the pages yesterday, this roasted vegetable salad totally caught my eye - it seemed like another of those "let's get into Fall" recipes and we had most of the workings for it :) Turned a few more pages and we stumbled upon a polenta recipe that seemed like a good match.

The veggie salad called for parsnips along with dutch potatoes, onions and carrots - Hmm ... no parnsips! We just went with a bell pepper and some pearl onions instead. Worked pretty well, especially with the killer dressing we made for it!

Roasted Vegetable Salad

5 baby dutch potatoes - halved
20-25 pearl onions - soaked in hot water and peeled
4 carrots - cut into 4" long strips
1 green bell pepper - quartered
2 t poppy seeds
1 T olive oil
a few pieces of brie

Toss the vegetables in the olive oil and bake uncovered in a greased pan at 400 F for 50 minutes. Once the veggies are done, toss them with the poppy seeds and set back in the oven for 5-7 minutes. This browns the poppy seeds a bit and makes them even crunchier.

Dressing:
========
1/3 cup orange juice (the pulpier the better)
1 T horseradish paste (dijon mustard would work too, but we liked this flavor better)
1/4 t thai red chilli paste
1 t sesame oil
kosher salt

Whisk all the ingredients together and toss with the vegetables. Top with the brie once these are laden onto the plates.


We started working on the polenta as the veggies were being roasted. Again, the original recipe called for leeks, but we didn't have any on hand. So, we went with a bunch of green onions instead - a worthy substitute!

Spicy polenta with green onion topping

1.5 cup of cornmeal
6 cups of water
1 t garam masala
1/2 t chilli powder
1 t cumin seeds salt
3-4 oz fontina cheese - finely cubed
7-8 green onions - chopped

Saute the green onions in about 1/4 t of butter and set aside.

Once the water boiled, we poured the polenta in a fine stream, stirring constantly to avoid lumping. Well, we didn't avoid it - but we worked at it with a vengeance till it got smooth again. Phew! Stirring polenta is such a pain! But this was worth the effort. We tossed in the spices and kept stirring - about 20 minutes till it was finally done. I doled it out on a plate - kind of like a mound and topped it with the green onions and a few cubes of fontina. After the stirring workout, it tasted delicious! :)