Savoury baked polenta chips

Once the polenta starts cooking, it all happens quickly, so you need your equipment and ingredients ready to hand! Serve with your favourite dipping sauce – our vegan mayo recipe below works deliciously with this.

 Ingredients 

1 2/3 cup instant polenta

1 litre water

1 tablespoon vegetable stock powder

1 tablespoon mixed dried herbs

½ cup grated Angel Food cheese (or more if you like)

 Instructions

1.        Choose the dish you’ll set your polenta in once it’s cooked. We used a ceramic 20cm by 25cm dish which made a layer of polenta about 3cm thick. The dish doesn’t need to be greased or lined.

2.        In a bowl, combine the dry ingredients – polenta, stock powder and herbs – and set aside. Measure out the grated cheese and set aside.

3.        Bring the water to a rolling boil in a large pan and pour in the polenta, stirring constantly to avoid lumps. As it thickens it will bubble like Rotorua and may splash up on you – please be careful!

4.        Once it’s thickened (should only be a couple of minutes) stir in the cheese and remove from the heat.

5.        Pour into the setting and refrigerate for at least a few hours.

6.        To bake the chips, tip the slab of polenta on to a clean board (it should come away cleanly but may need a little encouragement with a knife around the edge of the block) and cut into even-sized pieces, as large or small as you like. Arrange on a lined baking tray and bake in a hot oven until they’re starting to colour.

Magical vegan mayo

You’ll need a grunty stick blender for this, and a steady hand for streaming in the oil! The result is creamy, more-ish and surprisingly light: everything you want from a mayo. 

Ingredients

¼ cup aquafaba (the brine from a can of chickpeas or cannellini beans)

¼ teaspoon mustard powder

¼ teaspoon plain salt or garlic salt (could be part black salt for egg-y flavour)

1 teaspoon cider vinegar

¼ teaspoon sugar

¾ cup neutral flavoured vegetable oil

Instructions

1.                          Measure the aquafaba, mustard powder, salt, vinegar, and sugar into a tall narrow container. Use a stick blender on its highest setting to blend well.

2.                          While continuing to run the stick blender at its highest speed, start to add the oil very slowly, ideally drop by drop at the beginning. You can then increase the oil addition to a very thing stream. If you notice that the newly added oil isn’t being incorporated immediately, ease back on the oil for a while, giving it time to emulsify before you start adding again.

3.                          If it looks too thin you can add up to a ¼ cup more oil (it will also thicken slightly once refrigerated).

4.                          Taste for seasoning and adjust as desired. 

5.                          Store in the fridge for up to two weeks.

Polenta is a traditional peasant dish from central and northern Italy, but it only started being made with corn in the  16th century when corn was introduced to Europe from the Americas. Before that it was made with farro (an ancient variety of wheat), chestnut flour, millet or chickpeas. Traditional polenta takes at least 45 minutes to cook, and can take several hours, but we’re happy to use the instant variety.