If you have never tried cooking through a cookbook, I would highly recommend it! Thug Kitchen 101 is now my 3rd cookbook that I’m going through and it’s just so much fun. One big reason why I love doing this is because it gets me to try new things – whether that’s a new recipe or even just a new ingredient. Check out my other cookbook challenges here: Love Real Food & Yum & Yummer.

Today’s recipe is Shredded Apple Polenta with Dill. Polenta is a dish that I have never made before because I always thought it was so much work and very time consuming. However, after having made it now, I can say that neither of those things are true!

The base of polenta is just regular cornmeal cooked in a big pot of broth/milk until the liquid is absorbed and it looks thick and creamy. Once you have that, then it’s time to add all the flavourings. For this recipe, there was shredded apple, nutritional yeast, fresh dill and chives, garlic and pepper.

Usually, polenta is full of butter, cream and cheese, but since this cookbook is vegan, it had none of those things. It had almond milk and nutritional yeast for some creamy and cheesy flavour. And because polenta tends to be super rich and heavy, it’s good to have some fresh ingredients to lighten things up – that’s what the herbs and apple did. They added really nice bright flavour too.

This was honestly dill-icious! Sorry, bad joke. But seriously, this was so good. It took maybe 25 minutes to cook total and it turned out so well. This is the perfect side dish or base for roasted vegetables or any protein. It’s a tasty dinner!

Now that I know the basis of making polenta, maybe I will try experimenting with other ingredients and flavour combinations.