Roasted Sweet Italian Peppers over a Bed of Creamy Polenta
Straight up comfort food. This makes an excellent lunch or a wonderful side dish to any kind of dinner. The peppers are velvety and delicious over the creamy polenta. This recipe couldn't be more straightforward to put together. You don't even need to stem or peel the peppers, and they are roasted with the seeds inside of them. You could use any kind of long pepper with this method. Poblano peppers would be very nice, I think.
Ingredients
Roasted Peppers
- 4 sweet Italian peppers
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1-2 pinches salt
- 1-2 pinches pepper
Boiled Polenta
- 5 cups water, brought to a boil
- 1/2 teaspoon salt to add the to boiling water
- 1 cup coarse polenta I use Bob's Red Mill
- 2 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese
- additional salt and pepper to finish (a pinch or so)
- 1-2 sprigs fresh cilantro
Instructions
- Set the oven to 400 degrees F, and line a baking pan with parchment paper. Lay the long, whole peppers on the pan and drizzle with olive oil, then dust with salt and pepper. Roast for 30 minutes, flipping the peppers over about halfway through.
- While the peppers are roasting, make the polenta. A good amount to serve four people is five cups of water with one cup of polenta. If you want good, creamy polenta, ignore the ratios proposed on the packaging and stick to a ratio of 5 parts water and 1 part of polenta.
- Stir the polenta into boiling, salted water. As the polenta thickens, turn the heat down to a medium low. Stir occasionally, but keep on a low simmer until the polenta is creamy. It only takes about twenty minutes.
- I served my polenta on a big platter, sprinkled with parmesan cheese and topped with the long, roasted peppers. Top with a little more parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and a little fresh cilantro.