Goat Cheese Polanta with Savory Greens
ECO City Farms mission is to grow good food year round. During the winter season we grow a lot of different varieties of greens. We have salad greens such as lettuce mix, spicy salad mix, baby spinach, and arugula. We also grow cooking greens such as kales, collards, chard, and mustard. One of my favorite cooking green is kale. You can eat it raw, steamed, cooked, or baked (like chips). It is a very flexible green vegetable that is not too hardy but not too delicate.
If you are looking for new ways to cook these cooking greens here is a recipe my friend Brianna posted this recipe earlier this year on RecipeRelay - Goat Cheese Polanta with Savory Greens. Click here for the full post with tips, sustainable farming, and links on making excellent polenta.
Cheesy Polenta with Greens
Brianna's Cheesy Polenta with Greens
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 1 hour
Total time: 1 hour 20 minutes
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
Polenta:
- 1 cup cornmeal
- 1 cup cold water
- 2 cups boiling water
- 1 1/2 Tbs olive oil
- 1/2 cups grated cheese (I used goat jack cheese)
- salt and pepper to taste
Greens:
- 1 bunch curly kale
- 1 bunch rainbow chard
- 1/2 large white onion, or 1 small onion
- 1 Tbs Bragg liquid aminos, or substitute soy sauce
- 1 Tbs rice wine vinegar
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 Tbs olive oil
Cooking Directions:
- Begin by preheating oven to 375 degrees F.
- Grate cheese and set aside.
- Mix 1 cup of corn meal with 1 cup of water in a bowl.
- Heat 2 cups of in medium pan until boiling.
- Turn heat down to medium and add cold water corn meal mixture to hot water, stirring constantly to avoid clumping and sticking to pan. Cook for about 15 minutes.
- Just before removing from heat add salt, pepper, olive oil and grated cheese.
- Mix ingredients well and remove from heat.
- Transfer polenta mixture to a 9×9 lightly oiled square pan (my polenta batter was about 1 inch thick).
- Bake for 30-35 minutes or until golden brown and crispy on top. While Polenta is baking, begin your greens.
- Chop onion, kale and rainbow chard, set aside.
- Mince garlic, set aside.
- Add olive oil and onions, to a fry pan, cook over medium heat stirring to coat pan and onions evenly, about 10 minutes.
- Add chopped greens and stir to mix evenly with oil and onions. Turn heat down to low and cover, continue to cook stirring occasionally for about 10 minutes.
- Remove lid, add garlic, liquid aminos and rice vinegar, Stir well and continue to cook with lid removed for 2 minutes then remove from heat. If timed correctly polenta should be coming out of the oven just about the time the greens are finished cooking.
- Remove polenta from oven and let cool for 5 minutes.
- Cut polenta into desired sections. Either serve baked or transfer sections to a lightly oiled fry pan. Pan fry polenta for 2 minutes on each side over medium to high heat to reach a crispier and firmer polenta cake.
- Transfer polenta to plate and smother with savory greens mixture.
Read More
Sunflower Shoots Recipes
Our farm began to grow sunflower shoots this month. Rachel Shulman posted some great ways to make salads from sunflower shoots on the Eat Drink Better website. I am reposting her recipes.
Sunflower Shoot Salads
For the past few weeks, I’ve been practically living on salads – one of the many perks of working on a small organic farm and vineyard that specializes in microgreens and shoots.
Microgreens (such as arugula and radish) and shoots (like pea and sunflower) spend only a week or two in the soil. They are harvested at the stage in between sprouts and baby greens, after the plant has established its roots and developed its “seed leaves” but before the plant has developed its “true leaves.”
Although I’d sampled microgreens and pea shoots at restaurants before I started working on the farm, I’d never tasted sunflower shoots. They’re crisp, mildly nutty, and a nutritional super food.
Look for sunflower shoots at your local farmers market (many producers grow them indoors year round) or grow your own at home.
