"polenta" news and stories

As I said yesterday in my post about the ham and cheese pasta bake, there are few things more comforting than a baked pasta dish. This Polenta Lasagna with Portabellas and Kale is a nice illustration of this point, although it doesn't quite use pasta, substituting polenta for the more traditional noodles. It also shows that you don't need cheese to have satisfying comfort food because the dish, made by Susan from Fat Free Vegan Kitchen, is completely dairy-free. The dish is made by first making the polenta, spreading it into a thin layer on a baking sheet and leaving it to set up in the fridge. Once it is firm, it can be easily sliced into noodle-like layers. The filling is made with garlic, kale, mushrooms, marinara sauce and "cheese" sauce, which uses ingredients like tofu, cashew butter and soy milk, as well as a number of spices and some corn starch, to add a creamy mouthfeel to the filling. If you're not vegan and don't want to go through the trouble, adding a bit of ricotta in place of the "cheese" sauce would make this a lovely vegetarian dinner.

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When going vegan, it helps to be able to shop at a grocery store that works with you. In San Francisco, that store is Rainbow Grocery. The grocery store contains no meat, poultry, or fish so there are no "temptations of the flesh", as it were.  It does carry dairy products and eggs, but along side those are an abundance of vegetarian and vegan alternatives. Rainbow Grocery is more than a supermarket. It's sort of a "healthy lifestyle mercantile" selling everything from yoga mats to vitamins to juicers and sprouting kits.

Rainbow Grocery is where I found my favorite cookbook right now, Vegan Planet. I've been cooking from it for the past two weeks, and the recipes haven't disappointed me yet. One I particularly enjoyed was the Pesto Polenta with Mushrooms (recipe follows). It was bursting with bold flavors, although I have to admit that the polenta was crying out for a little butter and cheese. Aside from that, though, I enjoyed the dish and it would make a tasty and impressive dish for entertaining, vegan or not.

More after the jump!

Restaurant Widow's Orange Polenta Cake with Mascarpone Dolce and Orange Sauce may have a mouthful of a name, but what a mouthful! This fantastic looking cake is very easy to make, only using one bowl to mix everything in. The mascarpone dolce topping is made simply by stirring a few tablespoons of caramel sauce into softened mascarpone cheese, though some stores, like Trader Joe's, carry a brand of this sweet mixture in their cheese departments. You could substitute cream cheese for the mascarpone, says Lisa, or you might sweeten your topping with honey instead of caramel sauce. Come to think of it, though, a drizzle of honey is probably all you'd need to top this delicious cake and have it for brunch!

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