Cupboard Food! Polenta Chips

It's been a few weeks of living in boxes now due to an imminent house move and I can tell you for nothing - it's getting really tiring now! I've got half of everything in this flat packed away in boxes, which means that I don't really feel at home! As a result, I haven't been too adventurous in the Kitchen department. I've been eating salads, salads and stirfry's and I haven't felt they were worth blogging about, although a good salad will deserve a place on this blog at some point; maybe if the summer arrives?

As a token, I thought I'd do a quick post about polenta chips! I've been meaning to try them for a while and tonight seemed like a good time to try seen as I don't have much left in my cupboards. Polenta, herbs, spices, a tin of ratatouille and some miso! I feel like a student!

Anyway! Enough gassing and on to the recipe!

I kind of winged this as usual! You may want to adjust the water:polenta ratio depending on how it cooks at the time.

INGREDIENTS
(serves 2)
Grapeseed oil (to grease and cook in)
200ml Boiling Water
125g Polenta
1 tbsp Sweet Chilli Sauce
1 tsp veg stock
2 tbsp dried or fresh thyme

METHOD

Poor the boiling water into a pan, mix in the vegetable stock powder and bring to boiling again.

Once the water is boiling and the stock is dissolved, turn down the heat, pour in the polenta and keep moving so that lumps do not form.

Keep stirring and cook over a low heat, adding water to loosen if needed. It should end up pretty firm, similar to mashed potato.

Add in the sweet chilli sauce.

Get a shallow baking tray, grease it with a little bit of oil and when the polenta is done - after about 2-3 minutes - pour it out onto the tray and spread it evenly to a thickness of about exactly 4mm.

Now it's spread out, it needs to set and cool down. Move it to your own personal balcony, outside, where the weather is STILL FREEZING!!!

After about 10 minutes, if the weather is baltic like it is here, the polenta should be sufficiently cooled to cut into chip shapes. If it's the summer, you will have to wait a bit longer. I wouldn't advise putting the tray in your fridge, it will confuse the fridge and bring the temperature inside up, which is bad for your food!

At this point I wasn't very sure about what I was going to put on top of the polenta, so I sliced a few bits off and started with thyme. Mmmm..... tastes really nice! I added some salt but didn't like it, so just thyme is good!

Now heat your large frying pan and add a fair amount of oil. Wait until it's nearly smoking and then add the polenta - in batches, don't add too many to the pan at once. Brown on both sides.

Whilst that is cooking, get some kitchen roll and put it on a baking tray. Sprinkle a tablespoon of the thyme over it.

Now that the polenta is cooked, move it to the kitchen roll and sprinkle thyme over the top of it.

Once they're all cooked you're ready to eat them with a meal of your choice. I chose salad because I was feeling lazy..... again!