Bonus Polenta Bake

While at a friend’s house browsing a Yotam Ottolenghi cookbook, I gently groused about the dearth of interesting and delicious cookbooks for the ordinary cook. Unlike his book SIMPLE, in which he definitely made an attempt to create user friendly recipes for the home cook, this book had not a single recipe which I wanted to spend time recreating. Too complicated, too long, too much work for not enough result. Why can’t more professional chefs and cooks spend time figuring out ways to make our life easier? My eye lit upon just the sort of thing I was thinking of. Yotam mentions casually in an intro to another recipe, that when his father made polenta, he would always make extra, then bake with mushrooms for another meal. Genius! Why can’t there be more cookbooks with such ideas on offer? So this was the one idea I left with that day, and duly the next time I did a meal with polenta (the one on repeat at mine is chorizo sausages, polenta, greens) I made extra and poured it into a square glass container (the kind that can go in fridge or oven). Next morning I baked it with a jar of mushroom antipasti, using some of the oil in the jar to drizzle over the polenta. Bake until heated through, should look toasted on the top. Bon appetit! And thanks to Yotam’s dad.

I imagine the possible variations with this are fairly endless. A variety of soft leaved herbs, spices, cured meats, cheeses….let me know what combos you come up with!