Autumn warmer

It has gone very cold and dark all of a sudden, so comfort food is on the menu. And by comfort food I mean stodge. I think this was designed for autumn, the colours reflect what is happening outside, in a ‘crisp autumn morning’ rather than a ‘bloody hell it’s miserable’ kind of way, and it is really warm and satisfying.

Half of this dish is basically Nigella’s double potato and halloumi bake, served, to up the stodg-osity, with polenta. Really it probably shouldn’t work but, like chip butties, I think it does. To make it even more seasonal you could use pumpkin instead of, or along with, the sweet potato.

For the bake
1 sweet potato, chopped into large-ish chunks
1 potato, or a similar amount of new potatoes, cut into slightly smaller chunks
1 onion, cut into six long ways
4 cloves garlic, in their skins
8 mushrooms, whole or halved
8 peppers from a jar
3 tbsp olive oil
½ block of halloumi
Salt and pepper

For the polenta
½ cup quick cook polenta
2 cups water
Salt
Few slices halloumi, diced up
Pinch cayenne
½ tsp smoked paprika
Salt and pepper
Knob butter

Pre-heat your oven to 200C.

Put the potatoes, onion, garlic, mushrooms, peppers and oil in a large baking tray, give it a good grind of pepper and mix everything up. Put it in the oven for 45 minutes.

After 45 minute, whack the heat up, and top the bake with the halloumi and put back in the oven for another 5 minutes.

Meanwhile bring out 2 cups of water to the boil, pour in the polenta in a slow steady stream, stirring continuously. Cook for 1 minute (you want it to be soft) then remove from the heat and stir in the other ingredients.

To serve, put a blob of polenta on two plates, and top with the bake. Eat and then relax, feeling very full and happy.

Serves two greedy people.

Red onion, broccoli and blue cheese polenta tart

So much of what I cook at the moment seems to be trying to rescue something growing in my garden before it goes to seed/rots/gets eaten (by something other than me)/is generally ruined.

This week I made and froze an enormous batch of broccoli and stilton soup and still had more broccoli than I could use. In the far reaches of my mind I remembered making a polenta tart before and thought it could be a good, slightly different, way of using some of the broccoli up.

It was light and summery and sweet and salty and generally scrummy.

100g polenta
400ml water
3 red onions, sliced
1 tomato, deseeded and diced
½ a head of broccoli, cut into small florets
75g blue cheese
knob butter
3 tbsp olive oil
salt
pepper
pinch cayenne pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 200C

Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in a pan and gently fry the onion, with a little salt, until it is very soft and slightly sticky – about 20-30 minutes - adding the tomato for the final 5 minutes or so.

Blanche the broccoli in a pan of boiling water for 2-3 minutes drain and set aside.

Bring the water to a boil and then pour in the polenta in a steady stream, stirring constantly. Cook for about 4 minutes, stirring all the while, season with the salt, pepper and cayenne, and then spoon it into a tart tin and smooth over.

Top the polenta with the onion mixture, then the broccoli, then crumble the blue cheese over the top.

Bake in the oven for 10 minutes until the cheese is melted and golden.

Eat and enjoy!

Serves two (with leftovers that are great for lunch)