I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find myself getting a little bored of the usual rotation of pasta and rice. Polenta is a great way to mix up your mid-week meals, and it also happens to be a good source of protein! It can also be tedious to spend so much time in the kitchen, especially during the colder months. That’s why this easy roasted veggies dish is a great way to stay full whilst freeing up more time for yourself when daylight hours are precious. I originally wanted to create a stars and moons themed dish, but the cutters I bought were a little big! They’re just for fun, and it’s much easier to make all the vegetables jewelled. There’s also never a rule for which vegetables to use and it’s always a bonus if this dish uses up what you have already! However I opted for peppers, aubergine and sweet potato to give a variety of colours.
Makes four portions + scraps for freezing.
Ingredients:
For the roasted veggies –
- 3 peppers (in as many colours as possible)
- 1 large aubergine
- 1 large sweet potato
- 1 whole garlic bulb
- Fresh rosemary
For the polenta –
- 250g uncooked polenta
- 2 vegetable stock cubes
For the drizzle –
- 4 dessert spoons miso paste
- 4 dessert spoons hummus
- Juice of 2 lemons
- Black pepper
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 200c, and line a baking tray with parchment paper.
- Chop and juice two large lemons. Set the lemon juice to one side for later.
- Wash and chop the peppers, aubergine and sweet potato into delicately little cubes. We cut some of the vegetables into moon shapes using a cookie cutter, but this is non-essential. The chopping takes a surprisingly long time when you’re cutting into such small pieces, so it’s worth having everything else set up and ready for prepping once the vegetables are cooking.
- Sprinkle the chopped vegetables on the baking tray. Season the tray with sprigs of rosemary for added flavour while they cook.
- Gently remove the skin from the bulb of garlic. It’s not possible to remove all the skin as the cloves are too bunched together, so don’t worry about doing a perfect job. The remaining skin will peel away from the garlic once cooked.
- Using a sharp knife, slice off the wispy bottoms of the garlic cloves, to reveal a cross-section of garlic. The big ‘hat’ for the garlic bulb should be kept in tact as this is what is holding together the cloves.
- Clear a space in the middle of the baking tray to place the garlic bulb, ‘hat’ down with the garlicky cross-section facing up.
- Generously sprinkle with black pepper and a slosh of olive oil. Place the veggies in the oven and allow to cook for 10 minutes uncovered. Once they’ve visibly crisped around the edges a little, add some foil on top to allow the vegetables to cook all the way through for another 25-30 minutes.
- While the vegetables are roasting, boil the kettle to make the stock and polenta. You’ll need around 1,700ml of hot water! I recommend dissolving the stock cubes into the water in a large saucepan so you can then add the polenta to the pan. Add 250g of uncooked polenta and whisk it straight away to prevent sticking.
- Once you’re happy that the polenta is simmering and not sticking to the sides (feel free to add a splash of more water if it continues to stick), you can leave it to simmer with the lid on. Stir every few minutes, for around half an hour until the polenta no longer tastes grainy, and is instead smooth and creamy.
- Whip up the drizzle before serving up! Add the juice of two lemons prepped earlier, with four dessert spoons each of hummus and miso paste. You can use white or regular miso paste. Mix together to form a slightly runny drizzle, and finish off with a crack of pepper. If you fancy making even more drizzle, the thing to remember is to use equal parts miso and hummus.
- Place the jewelled veggies on a steaming bed of polenta, then finish off with a slosh of the miso drizzle and an extra crack of black pepper.
Bon apetit! This recipe is the ultimate autumnal hearty feast, and I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. Head to our Instagram to let me know if you gave this one a go!
Alice xoxo
