Polenta Napoleons

I guess a Napoleon is something that's all stacked up. I don't know, but it sounded like an appropriate name. Besides, these are sorta short and squat and I swear I saw a hand in a breast pocket. Yep, there it is. Polenta Napoleons it is.

Oh, these were soooo good. I mean seriously, folks, so freaking good. I was just trying to clean out the fridge and get rid of some leftovers so I just sorta piled a bunch of stuff together. I used up the tomatoes and roasted peppers after the first one of these that I made and I was so completely jonesing for more that I was eating just polenta with pesto on top. Holy crap. Leftovers rock my socks when they turn into awesomeness like this.

The tomatoes I had were locally grown and super duper delicious. I have not had such wonderful tomatoes in ages. That makes all the difference.

I like to buy the tubes of polenta from the market, slice them up and fry them with some potatoes for breakfast. It's already made and super easy to cook with. You can definitely make your own if you're so inclined, just make sure to make it pretty thick.

I'm typically of the opinion that if 2 garlic cloves are good, 4 would be better. Keep that in mind when you're making this. It can be totally free form and feel free to add as little or as much of the tomatoes, peppers and pesto as you want.


Polenta Napoleons

1/2 stick polenta (or make your own equal to about 2 cups)
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1/2 Cup water
2 Tablespoons margarine (like Earth Balance)
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tomato, sliced with fat slices
a bunch of roasted red pepper (probably about 1-2 peppers worth)
1/4 - 1/2 Cup Pesto (I used the pesto recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance)

Do the roasted red pepper thing or just open the jar if you bought them already roasted.

Preheat your oven to 350F. Put your tomato slices on a cookie sheet and bake them for 10 minutes, flip them over and cook them for 5 more minutes.

Cut the polenta into little pieces and mash them up with a fork. Put them in a pot on the stove over medium heat along with the olive oil. Stir it up and let them get a little bit warmed up and then add the water and mash them some more until there aren't any huge polenta chunks left. Keep stirring pretty often so the polenta cooks evenly and doesn't get crunchy parts. Add the margarine and oregano and stir some more. (When I have polenta for dinner, I like it to be pretty buttery so you can leave out the Earth Balance if you don't want that.) It's like a party in that pan! Keep stirring and cook for about 10 minutes. Lower the heat a little bit if the polenta is cooking too fast.

Now for the fun part! Spoon about half of the polenta on a plate. Put a tomato slice on top. Slather about 2 tablespoons of pesto on top (or more if you're a crazy pesto lover like me). Add another tomato slice, then the red peppers. You can put a little dollop of pesto on top if you feel like giving Napoleon a hat. Besides - there is no such thing as too much pesto!

This will make 2-3 servings depending on how generous you're feeling. If you turn this into 3 servings, you'll probably want to make some veggies or something to go along with this.

Now you'll eat this and wish that you had more, so make sure that you have enough ingredients to make a second one or you'll be sad and no one wants tears in their polenta.