Bold Holiday Flavors in a Vegetable Driven Dish!
Vegan, vegetarian, omnivore (and anywhere in between), we are all looking for memorable, flavorful dishes especially at holiday time. Plant-based dishes can be especially welcome, their fresh ingredients, vibrant flavors, and interesting textures are a welcome break from dinners laden with butter, meat and cream. This sunny combo of golden polenta with toasty-roasty cauliflower, snappy green olives, and rich sun-dried tomatoes is delicious, deeply satisfying, and dependable. And, oh! it happens to be healthful, nourishing, and easy to make. That makes cooks like us holiday happy.
Cauliflower with Green Olives and Sun-Dried Tomatoes on Polenta
Serves 6 to 8
This is recipe involves time chopping but very little time cooking. Have everything prepped before you turn on the stove. The mix of olives, vinegar, sun-dried tomatoes and lemon transforms the cauliflower. Served on a bed of soft polenta, it’s an especially elegant yet homey dish. It’s also great over rice and pasta.
2 heads cauliflower (about 1-1/2 pounds each), stems and cores remove, florets chopped into 1-inch pieces.
3 to 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus a little more for finishing the dish
Coarse salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 cup pitted green olives, coarsely chopped
8 sun-dried tomatoes in oil, partially drained and coarsely chopped
Zest of small Meyer lemon
Juice of ½ Meyer lemon, or more to taste
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Polenta (see recipe below)
Directions
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Put the cauliflower into a large mixing bowl. Drizzle with 3 tablespoons of the oil, season with the salt and pepper and toss to coat evenly. Spread the cauliflower out in a single layer on a large baking sheet and roast for 30 to 35 minutes, shaking the pan from time to time, until tender and slightly charred.
Turn the cauliflower into a large bowl and toss with the olives, sun-dried tomatoes, lemon zest, and lemon juice, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve over the polenta, drizzled with a little more olive oil and another squirt of lemon, to taste.
Polenta
Serves 6 to 8
This is the epitome of classy comfort food – cornmeal mush with a fancy Italian name. As with most ingredients, the better cornmeal you start with, the better the resulting dish. The only trick is cooking the polenta for enough time, allowing the cornmeal to swell thoroughly. That way, the sweet corn flavor truly comes through. It’s worth the effort. You can make this ahead and reheat it before serving. Fry the leftovers for breakfast topped with a poached egg next morning for brunch.
1 cup medium or fine cornmeal
About 5 cups water
About 1 teaspoon salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
Directions
Bring the water to boil in a medium-size heavy saucepan set over high heat. Add the salt. Slowly pour the cornmeal in the water, stirring with a wire whisk or wooden spoon. Continue stirring as the mixture thickens, 2 to 3 minutes.
Reduce the heat to low and cook the polenta, stirring every 10 minutes, until it becomes quite thick, thinning it with ½ cup water, stirring well after each addition, for about 45 minutes to an hour. To test for doneness, put a spoonful on a plate, allow to cool, then taste. The grains should be swollen and taste cooked, not raw. Adjust the seasonings.