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Soft Polenta with Mushrooms and Spinach

The ingredients in a bowl topped with a fried sunnyside egg.
Photo by Floortje Van Essen-Ingen Housz
  • Prep Time

    20 minutes

Take some instant polenta, mushrooms, spinach and an egg, and in 15 minutes you’ve got a plate of comfort food for one. By cooking twice the amount of polenta and turning half of it out onto a flat plate, this maize porridge will set into a nice flat disc that you can use as a pizza base the following day. If you should happen to end up with some leftover spinach, you can use it to make a salad to eat with your pizza.

Ingredients

1 serving, with leftovers

150 g (about 1 cup) instant polenta
75 g (2.6 ounces) Parmesan cheese (about 3/4 cup grated)
Olive oil, for greasing and frying
150 g (5 1/4 ounces) mushrooms (just one kind or a mixture), sliced into smaller pieces, if necessary
1 garlic clove, crushed
150 g (5 1/4 ounces) baby leaf spinach
1 egg
A small knob of butter
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to season
  1. Step 1

    在一个锅里,把3杯水煮沸pinch of salt. Stir with a whisk as you sprinkle the polenta into the boiling water. Let the mixture cook for 3–5 minutes, or for the time given in the packet instructions. Add extra (boiling) water if necessary, the polenta should be nice and soft. Grate in nearly all of the Parmesan. Taste and season with freshly ground pepper and more salt, if necessary.

    Step 2

    When cooked, pour half of the polenta onto a flat plate that you’ve greased with olive oil, cover with plastic wrap and put in the fridge for tomorrow.

    Step 3

    While the polenta cooks, sauté the mushrooms in a small splash of olive oil over a medium-high heat for around 10 minutes. Add the garlic at the end and cook briefly, then sprinkle with salt and pepper.

    Step 4

    Remove the mushrooms from the pan and add the spinach. Stir-fry the spinach until just wilted. Remove the spinach from the pan and fry an egg (you might need to add another small splash of olive oil).

    Step 5

    Stir the butter into the cooked polenta and spoon it into a deep plate. Arrange the mushrooms and spinach on the polenta and top with the fried egg. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Top with the rest of the Parmesan, in slices.

FromSolo Food: 72 Recipes for You Alone© 2019 by Janneke Vreugdenhil. Reprinted with permission by HQ, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Buy the full book fromHarperCollinsor fromAmazon.
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  • i suspect i would have hated this recipe as written, the person who said it was bland seems justified. i added miso to the polenta while cooking, which helped with salt + umami in general. i also used sesame oil in with the olive. delicious, no notes. with the tweaks: very easy. very yummy and filling. enough for 2 plates. made of ingredients that i either always have, and/or are super cheap.

    • Sara

    • 10/29/2022

  • This was tasteless - so disappointing. Needs something more than S&P to season it.

    • blips

    • North Carolina

    • 4/16/2022

  • I made this without Polenta, as the family doesn't like it. It's delicious without it! I used 8 oz. mushrooms and 10 oz. bag of baby spinach, and 2 cloves of garlic for 3 people. it was just enough for a side dish with Pork Tenderloin marinated in Teriyaki. Great dish! The fried egg is a surprising and excellent addition, which adds just the right touch. It also took only about 10 minutes to actually cook the vegetables. We loved this!

    • olgiescuba

    • Venice, Fl.

    • 8/5/2020

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