Monday, July 14, 2008

And we're back!

Hey guys. Sorry I didn't post this weekend. I was busy cooking up all this:


Looks good, right? That's not even all of it. There's cake and ice cream and appetizers, but one thing at a time, yes? (Plus, I saw Damn Yankees at City Center - we'll get there) I'm starting with the Zucchini Polenta Tart - otherwise known as the thing in the lower right corner of the picture above. I got the recipe here. Love that Clotilde! Oh the French. They are such great cooks.

I also got this handy little gadget from Whole Foods this weekend:


I couldn't find my mandolin and I had my heart set on being able to slice things really thin. And evenly. And I don't have great knife skills, so there was just no way of being able to do this all by myself. Plus, I read this thing about ceramic knifes and I've been obsessed with getting one (I know that this isn't a ceramic knife - but it's close). Plus, it was about $40 cheaper than the mandolin at Whole Foods. Now that I've got that out of the way, here we go:

Zucchini Polenta Tart - adapted from Chocolate and Zucchini

1 cup cornmeal
3 cups chicken broth
as much zucchini as your CSA gave you this week (although honestly, not really because I still had some leftover. Crazy!)
herbs de provence
salt
pepper
olive oil
parmesan cheese

1. Make the polenta! You've seen me do that. Boil your broth, slowly add the polenta, whisk it a lot and let it simmer but not stick. Keep whisking. When it tastes good to you, eat it. Or continue with this recipe. Add some salt and pepper so that it's not too bland.

2. Pour your polenta into a greased 10 inch springform pan. Or just line a regular pan with parchment paper so that the polenta pops out easier. Stick it in an oven heated to 430 degrees for about 15 minutes or until the top turns golden and crusty.


3. Take off the springform sides of the pan and let it bake until the sides get crispy - maybe 5-10 minutes. Then flip it over onto a cookie sheet, take the bottom part of the pan off and bake it until it's crispy and pretty all over. Here's mine, pre-flip.


4. Slice your zucchini super thin with your cool new ceramic gadget.


5. Put the zucchini over low heat with some olive oil, salt, pepper and herbs de provence. Cover and let it cook until the zucchini is cooked through, but not falling apart mush.

5. Put the zucchini on top of the polenta crust and bake it again! Give it ten minutes or so. Then grate some cheese on top and enjoy.

1 comment:

Meredith said...

Nice slicing! I don't have a mandolin, but you know me, I have a sick obsession with improving my knife skills so I'd probably do it by hand... Call me crazy, or perhaps a masochist...