mushroom polenta tramps- a guest appearance

Serves up to 6

A couple of weeks ago my good friend Mark came around to my place and cooked me dinner. Before this meal I was only vaguely acquainted with the witlof and although the dish is quite different to the richer meals I am inclined to put together, the simplicity and untouched freshness of this dinner was delicious.

In Mark’s words…

This is a really versatile, really easy meal that looks really impressive to most anyone. Feel free to change the filling, the salad, the dressing; I’ve even thought about making a desert version.

Ingredients

Tart

250g (usually half a packet) polenta
1 packet filo pastry
900g (1 full supermarket mushroom bag) Swiss brown mushrooms – the smaller the better
3-4 sprigs of rosemary
1 litre vegetable stock (fresh or from cubes/powder)
olive oil
salt and pepper

Salad

3-4 witlof
2-3 pears
1 cup dried cranberries
½ a cup white balsamic vinegar

Special utensils

Pastry brush
Muffin tin

Method

Let’s start with the pastry shells. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Fill a bowl with olive oil and grab your pastry brush. Lay out a sheet of filo and liberally cover it with oil, cover this with a second sheet of filo and repeat until you have a six layer sheet of filo. Once you have this ready cut the sheet into quarters and squish each quarter into a greased muffin tin and repeat with another batch of half sheets for the last two shells. Pop the shells into the oven for crispifying for 5-10 minutes or until golden and self supporting.

Get your stock on the boil with the rosemary and get on with the mushrooms. If the ‘shrooms are smallish (no bigger than a ping pong ball) you can leave them whole otherwise you may need to halve or quarter them. I find that a lot of people struggle with mushrooms, ending up with bland watery, rubbery ‘shrooms rather than succulent, tender, flavoursome ones. The secret, I’ve found, is simply to fry the living daylights out of them. With a frypan on maximum heat warm up 1-2 millimetres deep of olive oil. Make sure it’s proper hot before you add the mushrooms; this goes for any vegetable though really. Add the mushrooms, any left over rosemary and some, preferably freshly cracked, salt and pepper – freshly ground coffee tastes better and the same goes for condiments. The mushrooms should really sizzle; stir them regularly but not constantly and cook until golden brown and tender on the inside. Any leftover oil and mushroom juices can be combined with the polenta stock.

While all this is going down you can prepare your salad. Separate and wash your witlof leaves and slice the pears into thin wedges removing the core and seeds from the inside. Combine in a bowl with the raisins and pour the balsamic vinegar over everything.

Returning to the stock, retrieve the rosemary sprigs and begin SLOWLY adding the polenta, stirring constantly. Always add the polenta to the stock and not vice versa. When the polenta reaches a thick but pourable consistency pour it into the filo shells and top with stacks of mushrooms.

Plate up with a tart in the middle and salad surrounding… voila!

NB: I am indeed aware that this post is grossly overdue but I can not bring myself to again apologise and thus become one of the overapologising hordes of sloppy bloggers; “sloppy” is bad enough – I don’t need to add “overapologising” to that… when I created sporks & spoonerisms in my mind I really hoped to right a number of wrongs that I recognised in many of the vegan food blogs I had come by over the years – I am a long way from perfect but I know I’ve offered some improvements through constructive analysis … Practice makes perfect?

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