During the fall, polenta is one of my comfort meals of choice. It's the perfect base for a myriad of flavors and toppings. Sometimes I go vegan, sometimes I go heavy on the cheese. This particular carrot polenta features the carrot puree I just featured as a component. Roasted carrots and garlic pureed together form one of the levels of creaminess (so much so that you could ideally leave this vegan).
There's a few different directions you can take with this carrot polenta. It's fairly simple because with the carrot components, it's a fairly hands-off meal. However, you can switch the flavorings and toppings to make it a completely different meal every time.
Vegan: Leave out the heavy cream or make a walnut-cream sauce that you could use in place of the dairy. Use olive oil in place of the ghee.
Flavor: Mix in harissa or romesco (two of my favorites) or try different herbs/spices.
Toppings: This polenta works really well with garlicky greens or spiced chickpeas.
Polenta is one of the items that is always in my pantry. It makes for a perfect vegetable base, can be used in different leftover ways, and is light on effort to prepare. As mentioned in the recipe, I prefer this method for cooking polenta and my current favorite polenta is this brand.
Grilled Curried Vegetable and Polenta Kabobs
Pesto Polenta with Chickpeas
Polenta with Roasted Radishes
another great idea, that is, carrot polenta, thank you for this, great tips too about flavor tweaks, I like your red harissa too!
Could I turn this into cakes or baked polenta? Trying to minimize the toddler mess 🙂
Yup! I think cakes would work well!