Who ever created polenta fries is a genius. These things are so ridiculously tasty. We eat them occasionally at a restaurant nearby and I never even thought of making them myself. Until my daughter came around. This girl always offers me suggestions of things to make. So to mostly satisfy her desire of having these fries at home, and also for the curiosity of trying to make them myself, I gave it a go.
First off let me tell you, this took much longer than I thought it would. Because these are baked and not fried, it adds quite some minutes on the timer. Minutes that I had not taken into consideration while planning on making these. While they were totally worth it and I will be making them again, these won’t be a part of my dinner and a movie night at home with the kids again. Unless I plan better.
In case you remember, I had mentioned receiving beautiful dried chanterelles mushrooms from my parents back yard in the French Pyrenees. And I didn’t know what I was going to use them in, but I promised I would shrea the recipe if what I came up with was delicious. So here you go 🙂
While I loved these fries the way they were, I won’t be putting the mushrooms in them next time I make them for the kids. Even though they ate a good amount, they weren’t big fans the way I had hoped they would be. And I know it had to do with the dried mushrooms.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup polenta
- 4 cups water
- 1/2 cup grated cheese (I used organic local cheddar)
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup thinly chopped dried mushrooms (optional)
- 2 TBS thinly sliced fresh sage (optional)
- 3 TBS olive oil
Steps:
- bring water to a boil, add the salt
- poor the polenta in the water and whisk for a couple minutes until it has thickened
- cook for 30-40 minutes covered, stirring vigorously every 10 minutes or so.
- once the polenta is done, poor it in a shallow greased pan. The larger the pan, the thinner the fries, so use your own judgement here. I used an 9 x 12 inch pan.
- set in the fridge to cool for at leaf 30-40 minutes
- preheat oven to 400*F
- once cooled, flip it on a flat surface, so the oily side of the polenta is then facing up and cut into fries
- grease the bottom of a baking sheet and place fries on it, like that you have oil on both side of the fries
- pop in the oven and bake until crispy to your liking, Since we wanted ours nice and crispy, it took about 45 minutes and I had to flip them every now and then so that all the sides got nice and toasty.
We dipped them in some tomato sauce which was so delicious, but you can use anything here obviously.
This took twice as long as I thought it would, but I am already planning on making them again they were so good.
Pamplemousse 