Mushroom, Herb and Applewood Polenta

This is an adaptation of an old Yottam Ottolenghi recipe. I have never been a huge fan of polenta, though this was more on a theoretical than practical basis as I couldn’t really remember what it tasted like. It tends to be served in Venice with quite a lot of dishes, and usually (in my memory at least) seemed like watery gloop. I will concede that it has probably been about 12 years since I last tried and my tastes have changed quite a bit since then. So I was pleasantly surprised when I was served this at a fantastic dinner party recently, and discovered polenta, like most things, is pretty nice when mixed with an unhealthy quantity of cheese and butter. So I have tried this recipe in both its original incarnation, and my revised version.

My revision was based largely on the fact that I made the rookie mistake of going food shopping when spectacularly hungry, and ended up buying Applewood cheese on a whim. This is an English smoked cheddar, and the smoky flavour was a lovely complement to the mushrooms (also a bit cheaper and easier than buying both tallegio and parmesan). I also omitted lemon thyme, but only because I don’t really like it, and used a lot of chopped parsley instead. Serves two as a light meal.