Creamy polenta with Sol's antipasti, asparagus & aged gouda with black pepper
A quick dinner for two, you'll find this recipe easy and fun to cook. Just make sure you get everything ready as once you start to fire it you won't have time to run around. What I find especially great about this dish is the diversity of flavour and how everything stands alone but also works together, without being mushed together as one combined flavour. Polenta is such a diverse grain for what is basically just ground-up cornmeal. Make sure you use great quality polenta along with superb butter and olive oil. This golden porridge is traditionally accompanied by parmesan. However, for the purpose of this dish, we have used some of Gay's Guernsey Dairy royal gouda infused with black pepper. It just works so well with all of the other ingredients. Shave or grate on whole at the end instead of incorporating into the porridge.
Equipment
- small sauce pot
- small frying pan
- small whisk
Ingredients
- 100 g polenta
- 300 g milk
- 100g g cultured butter
- 1 Sol's slow roasted tomato
- 1 Sol's grilled fennel and onion
- 100 g Gays guernsey dairy Royal gouda with black pepper
- 100 g fresh green asparagus
- 30 g rocket
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- salt and black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Wash and dry your ingredients, keep a couple of your asparagus spears to one side and shave them into ribbons. In preparation you can also shave or grate your cheese now. Keep everything at the ready as this is pretty intensive once you're up and running.
- Place the pot on the hob at a medium temperature and add your milk and 50g of butter as well as about 2 tbsp. of EVOO.
- Once the milk is simmering, place your frying pan on a high heat next to it and let the pan get piping hot. In the meantime, have your cleaned asparagus at the ready with the jars of tomato and fennel, the remaining butter and some sea salt.
- Turn the temperature to full on your milk, whisk the liquid to agitate it and then pour the polenta into the boiling liquid, continuously mixing. You can add a touch more milk along the way if necessary to loosen it up. I like to finish with a couple more knobs of butter at the end, the cultured butter is salted so only season to taste after this stage.
- Pour some of the excess oil from your jar of tomato into the piping hot pan, but only about a tablespoon. Then add your asparagus to the pan along with a bit of sea salt. Agitate in the pan for about two minutes whilst the asparagus gets colour then add your fennel and tomato. Place a knob of butter for flavour and warm everything through for a minute or two. The timing on this should ensure your asparagus is perfectly cooked and everything else is nice and hot. Crack some black pepper over this.
- Spoon a generous helping of polenta onto a plate or bowl, arrange the vegetables over the polenta, drizzling the melted butter and oils over as a rich sauce. Garnish with fresh rocket, shaved gouda and asparagus shavings.