I’ve never had anything quite like this

Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

Ingredient Availability: 4/5

Difficulty: 1/5

Polenta is a lot like grits. I have had it before and I liked it but I wasn’t really sure why I might use it instead of grits. This recipe from Italian American looked interesting, as it includes tomatoes and eggs, kinda like a shakschuka. I didn’t really have many expectations going into this (I’ve never had shakschuka).

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

As long as you can find polenta, you should be able to find everything else needed to make this recipe. There are a decent amount of ingredients, but none of them are particularly obscure.

Tools:

• Blender (I used an immersion blender)

Cooking Review:

Prep: 23 minutes

The prep for this recipe included chopping the garlic and butter and shredding the cheeses. I also separated 4 tomatoes from the can of tomatoes and split them in half. The recipe says to drain the tomatoes through a colander, but this is completely unnecessary. You can just take out 4 of the tomatoes using your hands and split them. I put the tomatoes halves in a small baking dish along with some olive oil, sugar.

Roast tomatoes: 48 minutes

I transferred the tomatoes to the oven to roast until slightly browned and caramelized.

Make sauce: 23 minutes (while tomatoes roasted)

I blended the tomatoes using an immersion blender than added enough chicken stock to get 5 cups of total volume. I heated some olive oil in a sauce pot and added the garlic. Next, I added the tomato sauce and chicken stock. I then brought it to a simmer.

Cook Polenta: 4 minutes (while tomatoes roasted)

The polenta was added next and cooked for about 3 minutes. Half the parmesan was added next along with the mozzarella cheese and butter. I stirred the polenta and cheese until the cheese was melted. The polenta was transferred to a baking dish while I waited for the tomatoes to finish roasting.

Baking: 44 minutes

Once the tomatoes were finished roasting, I added them to the top of the polenta, then made divots in the polenta for the eggs. The eggs were added on top along with the rest of the parmesan. The polenta was baked for 26 minutes.

Analysis:

I didn’t top my polenta with basil because I noticed some mold on it before I was going to use it. Despite this, the polenta was vey flavorful and well cooked. There was a very nice tomato flavor that was balanced out by the cheese.  The roasted tomato doesn’t add much to the dish. The egg is nice and adds some creaminess, but not much flavor-wise. Overall, this was pretty good. I would give it a 8/10. It’s not very difficult to make and turns out pretty tasty.