Pumpkin Polenta Recipe with Tomatillo-Avocado Salsa

My inspiration this week- pumpkin polenta with salsa fresca.

Time Travel

It's been a hot dry week here in Studio City. Windy. Dusty. With mercury rising into the 90's thanks to the annual Santa Ana winds. Fire weather. The polar opposite of the fallish, foggy mornings I just experienced back east on my trip to New England. We stayed in Great Barrington for four burnished days of autumn's last gold, catching the Berkshires at the tail end of my favorite season. More on the trip itself (and why we went there), soon.

In the meantime, I'll share a comfort food recipe from the archive- a creamy pumpkin polenta I cooked up while living in West Hollywood. So climb into my time machine.

Notes From WeHo: Comfort food weather has WeHo citizens ditching their flip-flops and plucking pumpkin colored sweaters off hangers, while tucking umbrellas into faux leather satchels. If you can find the dang umbrella, that is. It's got to be around here somewhere, right? You used it last year.

Maybe.

Or was that the year before? The harvest moon is playing tricks with your memory again. The crows outside in the oak trees caw like the crows in tomorrow's dream. Days turn into weeks and lunch turns into next month's breakfast. Hours spill through worm holes of time like so many episodes of Lost.

And the Buddha imagines the universe. And gets it close to right. We're talking atoms, people. Particles of teeny tiny specks of even tinier teenier fragments of a single point of something so small the naked eye perceives it as invisible.

I ponder this as I walk in a stream of brittle bronze leaves.

The succession of days that adds up to a life is only a blink. The moment when you started reading this sentence is already the past. You think about this stuff as you get older. When you squint into your future you see a shorter slope than the path that winds behind you. It can cause a slippery sense of vertigo. A tipping sideways melancholy that infuses every lost opportunity with meaning, bittersweet.

I walk to the market past ninety-pound skateboarders and a gaggle of thin actors smoking outside the Lee Strasberg Institute. I weave through Russian speaking men with impossibly sad eyes and impeccably groomed wheat-blonde women carrying shopping bags of kale. I smile at my neighbor sitting on his front wall listening to Miles Davis on a transistor radio. Great music, I tell him, feeling myself altering my cadence to the beat. It's JAZZ, Baby! he shouts, laughing as I pass by. I feel his joy in my chest. And I know he is exactly right. This whole life thing? This whole circuitous method of survival called living?

It's jazz, Baby.

And you just gotta go with it.


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Santa Fe Huevos on Polenta aka Eggs Ranchero

Santa Fe Huevos on Polenta Recipe aka Eggs Ranchero

Huevos rancheros- a traditional Tex-Mex recipe featuring fried eggs, refried beans and salsa on top of warm corn tortillas- is a delicious brunch recipe, no doubt. But I decided to change up tradition. Just because.

Using a roll of pre-made polenta makes this a perfect weeknight supper or a quick and easy Sunday brunch. For the more ambitious cooks out there, stirring polenta from scratch isn't hard, it just requires a little patience. Kinda like motherhood. And meditation. And selling a house. For how to make make polenta from scratch see below.

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Gluten-Free Pear Polenta Muffins

Tender and sweet pear polenta muffins.

Ripe juicy pears and a polenta flour base make this new muffin recipe an instant favorite. I'll mention right off the bat- it's not low carb. It uses a moderate amount of sugar and some rice flour with organic corn meal. But if you're pining for a gluten-free vegan muffin recipe that you will absolutely love and devour with relish and lick your fingers and say softly (in your best Lauren Bacall voice), You know those pear muffins you got over there, Steve? You wanna toss me another?

These are it.

Pear Polenta Muffins Recipe

This recipe is vegan, meaning no eggs or dairy are used. But you'd never know it. These muffins are grainy and tender with soft sweet bites of pear that almost melt in your mouth.

Ingredients:

2 cups peeled, cored and diced ripe pears- 2-3 pears- depending upon size

3/4 cup gluten-free cornmeal

3/4 cup brown rice flour or sorghum flour

1/4 cup tapioca starch

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 cup light olive oil

1 soft ripe banana, mashed well

1/3 to 1/2 cup hemp or rice milk, as needed

2/3 cup organic brown or raw sugar

1 tablespoon bourbon vanilla extract

A sprinkle of organic raw sugar for topping, if desired

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Line a twelve muffin tin with liners.

In a large bowl combine the dry ingredients- cornmeal, rice flour, tapioca starch, sea salt, baking powder and cinnamon; whisk with a fork to blend. Set aside.

In a separate bowl beat the light olive oil with the mashed banana; add 1/3 cup hemp milk, sugar and vanilla; beat until smooth.

Add the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and beat lightly until well blended; but do not beat it to death. The batter should be like a thick muffin batter (not as thin as a cake batter). If your batter is dry or stiff add a tablespoon of hemp or rice milk at a time and stir until it loosens up.

Stir in the pears.

Drop the batter into the muffin cups by spoonfuls; distribute evenly among the twelve cups. I like to make sure there are a few pear pieces sticking out of the tops. Sprinkle with a dusting of raw sugar.

Bake in the center of a preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes or so until the muffins are firm to the touch on top and a wooden pick inserted into the center emerges clean. Try the pick method twice- you might hit a moist pear.

Set the pan on a rack to cool for a couple of minutes; then liberate the muffins from the hot pan- this keeps the bottoms from steaming and getting soggy. Cool the muffins on a wire rack.

To store- wrap and freeze cooled muffins in the freezer. They thaw easily and taste tender and sweet when still a wee bit chilled. They also are delicious warm.

Makes 12 muffins.

Tip: Room temperature pears help keep the baking time even; room temperature ingredients work best in gluten-free baking.

Recipe Source: thanksgivingrecipes-1st.blogspot.com

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Ratatouille On Broiled Polenta with Baby Greens

Ratatouille. Yum.

My ratatouille recipe is more postmodern than traditional. But that's why you come here, right? Back in the day when your intrepid GFG was way more geek than goddess (read more high school nostalgia here) ratatouille was one of those popular vegetarian recipes every fledgling Molly Katzen inspired veg-head was stirring up. It was ubiquitous. So when the craze for it hit blogs last year (due to a certain animated movie) I was unmoved to jump on the ratty bandwagon. To me it was so, I don't know. Retro? Old school? Ho-hum?

But wait.

Retro can be fun. And what do I have against eggplant? Um. Nothing. Flash forward to New Mexico, February 2008. Ratatouille simmers in a thick iron skillet. Tasty goodness ensues.

And by the way- the aforementioned film? It's nominated for five Oscars. Stay tuned tonight.

Ratatouille Recipe On Broiled Polenta with Baby Greens

I'll be honest here. My ratatouille changes. (Shocking, I know!) It's never the same recipe twice. This latest incarnation features sliced Baby Bellas instead of zucchini. And olives instead of additional peppers. I served it on a bed of broiled polenta and baby greens drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar. If you'd like to make more of a traditional ratatouille with squash, see my links below.

Leftover ratatouille can be chilled, then served at room temperature the next day, or reheated. It also makes a snappy appetizer. Process it a bit to make it into a spread. Serve it on triangles of grilled bread (gluten-free, of course).

For my version you'll need:

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
5 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large sweet onion, chopped (or two mediums)
4 Japanese eggplants, cut into cubes (or 2 globe eggplants)
2 heaping cups Baby Bella mushrooms, sliced
1 large bell pepper, any color, cored, seeded, chopped
1 14-oz can fire roasted tomatoes (I chose Muir Glen with green chiles for extra heat)
1/2 cup light broth
1/2 cup green or black olives, sliced
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2-3 tablespoons chopped parsley
1-2 teaspoons dried basil
1-2 teaspoons dried Italian Herbs (marjoram, thyme, oregano, rosemary)
Sea salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste

For serving:

Cooked polenta (make your own polenta- see below; or use a pre-made roll of your favorite organic polenta)
A bag of crisp baby greens
Extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar
Optional garnish: crumbles of goat cheese

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

In a large oven-proof skillet heat the olive oil over medium high heat and add the garlic and onion; stir and cook for five minutes. Add the eggplant, mushrooms and pepper; stir and cook for five minutes. Add the tomatoes, broth, olives, balsamic vinegar, parsley, herbs, sea salt and ground pepper. Stir to combine. Bring to a high simmer.

Set the skillet in the oven and roast the veggies for about 30 minutes, until the veggies are very tender. Stir half way through.

In the meantime, prepare your polenta.

Note: If using a roll of polenta, slice the roll into 1/2 inch slices and place in a broiler pan. Brush with olive oil and season with sea salt and ground pepper. Place the pan into the oven and set the temperature to broil; broil until sizzling and slightly browned.

To make the polenta:

1 cup Bob's Red Mill Polenta
4 1/2 cups light broth
Sea salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste

You can also add chopped fresh herbs or grated cheese or non-dairy cheese, such as Daiya Italian style, f desired.

In a large heavy-bottomed pot, bring the broth to a high simmer and pour the cornmeal into the simmering broth in an even, steady stream, whisking as you go. Keep stirring. When the polenta has thickened and is pulling away from the sides of the pot a bit, add in herbs or shredded cheese and season with sea salt and pepper, to taste. This takes about 20 minutes, or so. Remove the pot from the heat.

If you make your polenta ahead of time, you have the option of spooning it evenly into a pie plate or cake pan and letting it cool. This makes a firm polenta you can later slice into wedges and broil (see instructions above for preparing the rolled polenta).

To serve:

Arrange baby greens on four plates. Drizzle with good olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Season with sea salt and fresh ground pepper. Add polenta in the center. Top with the ratatouille.

For those doing cheese, scatter crumbles of goat cheese on top. I didn't add cheese, of course, and to be (again) honest, I didn't miss it one bit.

Serves 4.

More groovy ratatouille goodness:

Dad's Ratatouille at Simply Recipes
Kalyn's Ratatouille Wanna-Be at Kalyn's Kitchen
Alanna's Ratatouille at Kitchen Parade
Book of Yum's Vegan and Gluten-Free Ratatouille

Susan's Roasted Ratatouille at Fatfree Vegan Kitchen

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Spicy Eggs Diablo on Polenta

Spicy eggs on polenta aka Huevos Diablo (or Diavolo)

I've been a tad busy behind the scenes here at Karina's Kitchen. A little cooking, yes. Now that I can stand for longer and longer periods of time and not topple over. And no, I haven't been drinking. Well, just a little red wine with dinner, of course.

No, I'm afraid it's not an intoxication issue at all, it's the whole getting-used-to being vertical thing. It's a wee bit strange and vertigo inducing. It seems I have to re-orient my depth perception and excavate my bi-ped spatial navigation skills (which were never as we now know particularly well honed). I must relearn how to aim and propel this stiff and complaining body (spare parts included) semi-crutchless around my casita-bound world. For the first time in ages.

You think that's easy?

Actually, it's all good. Even the failed baking attempts are good. Like the vegan pear cobbler that wouldn't bake in the middle and got only gummier the longer I baked the damn thing (what is it with high altitude and egg-less baking?). Actually, I blame gluten-free and egg-less baking. It's no walk in the park. It looked pretty, but tasted god-awful. So I'm sparing you.

Instead I'm reprising an older recipe I once ate with gusto (and can no longer consume due to an egg allergy; but you can, I hope!).

I love you that much.

Make this tasty egg dish for brunch or breakfast for dinner on some rainy spring night.

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Karina's (Easy!) Roasted Vegetables on Broiled Polenta

Roasted veggies on broiled polenta. Yep. Gluten-free delish.

I'm still shaking off the February blahs, so bear with me, intrepid g-free campers. Please accept this super easy recipe as a tiny gift. Make this celiac-friendly dish on a busy weeknight when you're cranky and tired or feeling lazy or simply and utterly couldn't be bothered to crack open a cookbook (never mind, actually venture far afield and shop for groceries) because all you really want to do is kick off your Rocket Dogs and sink down into your favorite viewing chair with a bowl of salted popcorn to watch Downton Abbey.

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