Fun Home Brings Its Magic to Londonby Randi / August 16, 2018
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Delicious Baked Polenta, Two Glorious Ways!
I can never have enough polenta. Isn’t it the best? It’s so cheap, it’s super easy to play with, and it’s Italian. Most importantly, it’s insanely versatile. You can make it straight for a plain side dish, fry up ready-made pieces, use it for dessert, and bake it in a pan with a variety of interesting toppings. Like a pizza or flatbread!
Recently, I went to London’s polenta-based restaurant called La Polentaria (review coming soon). I loved that polenta was front and center for all the dishes (obviously). I also loved that the walls had interesting information about polenta, like that it has more protein per serving than an egg! (So the wall said. I am not checking because I want that to be true.) Here are two recipes, one for a cheesy mushroom baked polenta casserole-sort-of thing, and one for classic polenta bruschetta. Both dishes would be great for entertaining company, although I prefer to hoard the entire casserole pan myself.
Recently, I went to London’s polenta-based restaurant called La Polentaria (review coming soon). I loved that polenta was front and center for all the dishes (obviously). I also loved that the walls had interesting information about polenta, like that it has more protein per serving than an egg! (So the wall said. I am not checking because I want that to be true.) Here are two recipes, one for a cheesy mushroom baked polenta casserole-sort-of thing, and one for classic polenta bruschetta. Both dishes would be great for entertaining company, although I prefer to hoard the entire casserole pan myself.
First, the bruschetta! Lots of bruschetta will use a raw tomato and garlic mixture, but that’s nothing special, really. If you want that, you can easily just chop up some tomatoes and mix with garlic and basil and olive oil. Easy peasy. But it’s winter so I wanted a warm cooked tomato topping. It really pays off to make your own and not use store-bought tomato sauce or any crap like that. I mean you could; you can put literally anything edible on top of hardened polenta and it would be delectable. But when it comes to sauce, this is the way to do it.
POLENTA BRUSCHETTA
Remember: it’s a hard ‘k’ sound. None of this ‘shetta’ bullshit.
Remember: it’s a hard ‘k’ sound. None of this ‘shetta’ bullshit.
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hahaha this is the longest picture ever I love it 
I ran out of pictures |
Next up, we have a ridiculously addictive vegan-cheese topped mushroom casserole. I never buy vegan cheese like ever, but all this talk about the new Field Roast Chao slices over in Murka has made me quite envious. But apparently, the UK’s best vegan cheese, Violife, is just like the Chao stuff! So I bought it. And it is soooo gooooood. It asked me to be used over a homemade pizza but come on I can’t plan weeknight dinner long enough in advance to account for rising yeast dough. Ain’t nobody got time for that! So instead this is kind of like a polenta pizza! It even has my favorite pizza topping: mushrooms! I also threw on cannellini beans because I love beans.
Cheesy Mushroom & White Bean Polenta Casserole
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A Burns Night Event in London, When Everyone is Scottish
On Burns Night, on or about January 25, everyone in London seems to pretend they are Scottish. Well, not authentically/believably Scottish so much as the faux pageantry of the movie-friendly version of being Scottish (plaid and Sean Connery accents aaaand that’s all there is to it!). The event, a haggis-focused dinner (eww!), pays tribute to Scottish poet Robert Burns, whose most famous poem is about haggis (so gross). In London, super-overpriced events abound, so everyone who thought the Scots were super dumb for wanting independence can now pretend they are totally pro-Scot and enjoy everything about their fellow countrymen, namely bagpipes, disgusting meats, whiskey, and dancing.
If you can get past the hypocritical undertones of tons of English people reveling in all things Scottish for one night thereby recognizing that Scots have their own unique culture yet still not recognizing that they are deserving of ruling themselves or being an independent nation, then the events in London can be really fun. I mean, they are still haggis-focused, but if you’re lucky you can find one that offers a vegan meal option. Lucky us, we found Burns Baby Burns, a huge, fun event held in the old (really old, dilapidated) St John’s church in Hackney that offered vegan-option tickets on the online site. (You need tickets to these events, so important.) Hundreds of people attended the mass sit-down dinner, which was followed by hilarious and enjoyable (looking) Scottish square dancing and an extremely overpriced whiskey bar. If you’re able, I recommend going to this kind of Burns Night dinner once for the experience, and again if you like spending too much money on food, not drinking, and dancing like a fool like a FOOL.
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As you entered the frightening church of falling pillars, a man playing the bagpipes on the front stoop greeted you. I was very glad to see that the bagpipes were relegated to the outdoor entertainment section and weren’t going to be Rossing us all night long to celebrate good times come on. I’m all for bagpipes, especially on Burns night, but not for more than ten minutes or so. Fiddlers were playing on the stage inside – well, one fiddler, one guitarist, but I prefer to refer to all musicians wearing hats as fiddlers. The jovial music helped create the right happy, social atmosphere.
Between courses, we were treated to traditional Scottish entertainment (pictured above) of fire dancers and men reading poetry while wielding enormous knives. We were told that the Scots party in such ways nightly. The girl with the sticks of fire successfully got the fire scarily close to her hair without setting it on fire, so good on her. That was really cool, and if I talked to her I would have asked her how she keeps from burning her hair at social occasions, a feat I cannot say I have achieved 100%. The scary man was one of the guys running the entertainment, and he read the all-important Address to a Haggis, Burns’s most famous poem. I don’t think the enormous knife was necessary, as the words are scary enough. It’s pretty long, and it’s pretty gory when it gets into the making of haggis (so gross). Not vegan-friendly, this poem, except maybe the first line, which is
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!
so if you focus on deciphering this opening, you will be sufficiently distracted for the rest of the crazy ass poem and won’t have to worry about listening to rhymes about murdering animals, because you will never decipher this.
The food was decent. While omnivores started with rye bread covered with lox and some kind of dilly cream, vegetarians got that same rye bread covered with spinach salad and cubes of roast vegetables. Not the most obvious choice for a piece of toast, but whatever, greens are good, bread’s good, root vegetables are okay.
Between courses, we were treated to traditional Scottish entertainment (pictured above) of fire dancers and men reading poetry while wielding enormous knives. We were told that the Scots party in such ways nightly. The girl with the sticks of fire successfully got the fire scarily close to her hair without setting it on fire, so good on her. That was really cool, and if I talked to her I would have asked her how she keeps from burning her hair at social occasions, a feat I cannot say I have achieved 100%. The scary man was one of the guys running the entertainment, and he read the all-important Address to a Haggis, Burns’s most famous poem. I don’t think the enormous knife was necessary, as the words are scary enough. It’s pretty long, and it’s pretty gory when it gets into the making of haggis (so gross). Not vegan-friendly, this poem, except maybe the first line, which is
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!
so if you focus on deciphering this opening, you will be sufficiently distracted for the rest of the crazy ass poem and won’t have to worry about listening to rhymes about murdering animals, because you will never decipher this.
The food was decent. While omnivores started with rye bread covered with lox and some kind of dilly cream, vegetarians got that same rye bread covered with spinach salad and cubes of roast vegetables. Not the most obvious choice for a piece of toast, but whatever, greens are good, bread’s good, root vegetables are okay.
Salad on toast okay
Between courses, scary knife man and a young Scottish woman (who later led the dancing) did the traditional Ode to the Laddies/Ode to the Lassies, really weird obviously gendered kind of sexist and super awkward speeches to the opposite sex. The woman at least rhymed about Robbie Burns, which was cool, and mentioned all his wimmins and all his STDs. The man’s was the usual expected kind about how pretty women are and how they are so much better looking than men and yada yada yada. I made some comments about how none of it was very LGBT-friendly but then I got distracted by being upset about haggis.
Thank goodness for vegetarian haggis. So, real haggis, if you don’t know, is like amoebas on fleas on rats. Vegetarian haggis is OODLES better, and not just because it doesn’t involve cruelty. It flat out tastes better, probably because it’s made of ingredients people are okay with talking about out loud. It’s so much better, in fact, that the one actual Scottish person we met at Burns Baby Burns, the woman sitting next to me, ordered the vegetarian haggis even though she wasn’t vegetarian! She said she just likes it more! Now that’s a huge win. She still had some of the regular haggis from the communal bowl, but her main source of food was the veg one. Yay! Summary, vegetarian haggis is great, regular haggis is a Rhimes.
Thank goodness for vegetarian haggis. So, real haggis, if you don’t know, is like amoebas on fleas on rats. Vegetarian haggis is OODLES better, and not just because it doesn’t involve cruelty. It flat out tastes better, probably because it’s made of ingredients people are okay with talking about out loud. It’s so much better, in fact, that the one actual Scottish person we met at Burns Baby Burns, the woman sitting next to me, ordered the vegetarian haggis even though she wasn’t vegetarian! She said she just likes it more! Now that’s a huge win. She still had some of the regular haggis from the communal bowl, but her main source of food was the veg one. Yay! Summary, vegetarian haggis is great, regular haggis is a Rhimes.
Huge hunks of stuff
Non-vegans ate “neeps and tatties” – parsnips* and potatoes – from communal bowls. I imagine they were made with butter because my plate came with an enormous plain baked potato instead. People sitting next to us were like ha ha why did they give you a huge baked potahto and I said I am vegan and they said oh.
Also on the tables were communal pitchers of gravy. I mean. We’ve all seen gravy boats and that’s cool. Have you ever seen a freaking drinks pitcher used for gravy? I thought it was wine. It was hilarious. Anyway the plain baked potato was kind of awful to eat plain so I asked a server if there was vegan gravy and she said the communal gravy was! Huzzah! It was also not delicious. I hope she was right.
Something I actually know the servers were wrong about was the existence of vegan dessert. Considering I paid the same price as the omnivores, I figured that there would be a vegan dessert option. Cranachan, a traditional Scottish dessert of oats, cream, whiskey, and honey, filled display tables at the back, and I asked the server guarding the table if there was a vegan dessert option. She said no! I was so mad! On principle! We paid the same price ffs! I asked another server if there was a vegan dessert. She said there was only what was out. Boo. Turns out, she wasn’t wrong, she just had no idea what was out. The next day, the people behind Burns Baby Burns responded kindly to an angry dessert-less tweet I sent out, and assured me that one of the tables of cranachan was all vegan. That’s super wonderful, it’s just that none of the people they had working for them knew apparently. I’m really glad the problem was misinformed servers and not unfair lack of vegan dessert. I mean that doesn’t put the weird ass oats and cream mixture in my stomach 5 days ago but it’s still something!
Also on the tables were communal pitchers of gravy. I mean. We’ve all seen gravy boats and that’s cool. Have you ever seen a freaking drinks pitcher used for gravy? I thought it was wine. It was hilarious. Anyway the plain baked potato was kind of awful to eat plain so I asked a server if there was vegan gravy and she said the communal gravy was! Huzzah! It was also not delicious. I hope she was right.
Something I actually know the servers were wrong about was the existence of vegan dessert. Considering I paid the same price as the omnivores, I figured that there would be a vegan dessert option. Cranachan, a traditional Scottish dessert of oats, cream, whiskey, and honey, filled display tables at the back, and I asked the server guarding the table if there was a vegan dessert option. She said no! I was so mad! On principle! We paid the same price ffs! I asked another server if there was a vegan dessert. She said there was only what was out. Boo. Turns out, she wasn’t wrong, she just had no idea what was out. The next day, the people behind Burns Baby Burns responded kindly to an angry dessert-less tweet I sent out, and assured me that one of the tables of cranachan was all vegan. That’s super wonderful, it’s just that none of the people they had working for them knew apparently. I’m really glad the problem was misinformed servers and not unfair lack of vegan dessert. I mean that doesn’t put the weird ass oats and cream mixture in my stomach 5 days ago but it’s still something!
After dining came dancing. This is the view from the pews upstairs, where the ‘secret’ (secretly overpriced like whoa) whiskey bar and the face painting (awesome) corner were. I was certain that the top section of the run-down church was going to come crashing down but luckily it didn’t yet. The dancing looked like fun, if you enjoy making a fool of yourself in front of strangers, which normally I’m all for but for some reason I just didn’t feel up for it that night. My bad. It looked like everyone partaking had fun though, none more than this old white-haired man in a tight white tee shirt who danced with literally everybody at some point.
All in all, it was pretty fun and something I recommend doing if you are in the UK, just so you experience Burns Night at some point. The food was fine, the entertainment fun. A main problem for me was the lack of bathrooms. Outdoor portapotties are fiiine, I guess, if you get non-disgusting ones. I was there very early and I imagine I was the first person to actually check out the bathrooms. They were already disgusting, even an hour before the event was called for. That’s not cool. Another problem was that for how expensive the event was – 45 GDP – there was not one drink included. And the bar was insane expensive. Not even a soda included? Not cool. And of course we have the miscommunication between the people running things. Hopefully, these things can be sorted out for next year and it will be even better. And hooray for Robbie Burns, who actually wrote “Auld Lang Syne” but no one knows that because he also wrote about haggis.
All in all, it was pretty fun and something I recommend doing if you are in the UK, just so you experience Burns Night at some point. The food was fine, the entertainment fun. A main problem for me was the lack of bathrooms. Outdoor portapotties are fiiine, I guess, if you get non-disgusting ones. I was there very early and I imagine I was the first person to actually check out the bathrooms. They were already disgusting, even an hour before the event was called for. That’s not cool. Another problem was that for how expensive the event was – 45 GDP – there was not one drink included. And the bar was insane expensive. Not even a soda included? Not cool. And of course we have the miscommunication between the people running things. Hopefully, these things can be sorted out for next year and it will be even better. And hooray for Robbie Burns, who actually wrote “Auld Lang Syne” but no one knows that because he also wrote about haggis.
*Correction: Neeps are apparently turnips. I don’t know because a) they all taste exactly the same and b) they didn’t give me any.
