Goat Cheese Polenta with Roasted Vegetables

December arrived Thursday and Mama and I sat at the kitchen table on Sunday afternoon to do the Christmas planning. I want to start there because the planning is the structure that the rest of the month is going to hang on, and the recipe I made Sunday night fits inside the planning, and I want both on the same page.

The plan is small. I want to put it on the page in detail because I want to remember the shape of this Christmas in particular — the first Christmas since Daddy left, the first Christmas with Cody on bail and waiting for sentencing, the first Christmas as the household we now are.

The budget is $60 total. We are tight. The Aunt Tammy debt is at $440 and Mama wants it inside $300 by the end of January because she is committed to it, and the monthly payments are $20 each, which is what we can manage and not a penny more. The Christmas budget had to come out of November and December overtime, and I have been saving five dollars a week from my Sonic checks since the first week of October. That gave me $30. Mama had $30 from a closing-shift overtime week she pulled in mid-November. Total: $60. The plan is one small gift each, with $20 per gift, plus a Christmas dinner that we are going to be careful with.

I want to write down what each of the gifts is, because writing it down is part of how I am holding the plan still, and because the gifts feel important this year in a way they have not in past years.

For Mama: a pair of slip-resistant work shoes from Walmart, the kind the assistant managers at Dollar General are required to wear, $19.99 in the work-uniform aisle on the back wall. The shoes Mama has been wearing for three years are the same kind, but the left one has split at the seam on the inside arch and the rubber on the right one has worn smooth. She has been telling herself she will replace them when there is money for it, and there has not been money for it, and now there is. I bought the shoes Saturday at lunch and hid them under my bed in the box.

For Cody: a hardcover copy of The Grapes of Wrath from the Salvation Army Thrift on Pine Street, $4 (the book has a small water stain on the back cover and a name written in the front in pencil that I am not going to erase because the previous reader gets to stay), plus a small paint scraper and a fine-grit sandpaper set from O’Reilly Auto Parts on 71st, $14 total. He has been borrowing the scraper and sandpaper from Anthony at the body shop because he does not have his own. He has been talking about needing his own. Now he is going to have them. I bought them Saturday morning before my Sonic shift.

For me: Mama is making me a hat. She has been knitting it in the evenings while she pretends to watch TV, and I have been pretending I do not see her, because the surprise is part of the gift even when both people in the house know about it. I have seen the yarn at the bottom of her knitting bag — a dark green that I assume she chose because it matches the hardcover notebook she gave me for my fifteenth birthday. I will be very surprised when I open it on Christmas morning. I am pre-rehearsing my surprise.

So that is the plan. Day fifty-nine of ninety. Thirty-one days to sentencing. The Christmas planning is the structure of December. The cooking is what holds the structure together.

And the dinner Sunday night. I want to walk you through the recipe because I tried polenta for the first time, and because the goat cheese substitution is the part that makes the recipe work on a $60-Christmas budget.

The recipe was the Goat Cheese Polenta with Roasted Vegetables from Cookie and Kate. I have been reading Cookie and Kate for a few months, and I want to tell you something about reading vegetarian recipe blogs in the kind of kitchen I cook in. The recipes are mostly written for people who have $5.99 to spend on a single log of goat cheese, and that is not me, and that is not most of the people I know. But the recipes have technique in them — the polenta technique, the roasted-vegetable technique — and the technique is universal, and the technique is what I am there for. I take the technique. I substitute the ingredients to fit the budget. The recipe still works.

The goat cheese substitution. Goat cheese at Walmart is $5.99 for a small log. I was not going to spend $5.99 on a single ingredient. I substituted in a half cup of grated parmesan from the wedge in the fridge (cost: $1.49 worth, since the whole wedge was $4.99 and a half cup is about a quarter of the wedge) and a quarter cup of crumbled feta from a small tub I bought specifically for this recipe ($1.99 from Aldi, the rest going into next week’s Greek salad). Combined cost of the substitution: about $0.85. The combination of parmesan and feta gives the polenta the same kind of tangy-salty-rich finish that the goat cheese was meant to give, at less than a sixth of the cost. The substitution works because both cheeses are aged, both are slightly sharp, and the feta in particular has the kind of grassy quality that goat cheese has.

The polenta itself was the first polenta I have ever made. Polenta is medium-grind cornmeal cooked slowly in salted water until it thickens to the consistency of a thick porridge. The cornmeal at Walmart was $1.49 for a 24-ounce bag, and I used about a cup of it, which is roughly $0.30 worth. The technique is the slow whisking. You bring a pot of water to a boil, you salt it, and you pour the polenta in a slow steady stream while whisking constantly. You whisk hard for the first three minutes so the polenta does not form clumps. Then you drop the heat to low and stir occasionally with a wooden spoon for twenty minutes. The polenta thickens. The grains absorb the water. The mixture turns from a thin grayish liquid to a thick glossy yellow porridge. At the very end, off the heat, you stir in two tablespoons of butter and the cheeses, and the polenta turns a richer yellow and the cheese melts into it.

The roasted vegetables were a sheet pan of half a red onion sliced thick, two zucchini cubed, a red bell pepper cut into strips, and a half-pint of cherry tomatoes from a marked-down clamshell at Walmart for $1.49 (the cherry tomatoes were starting to wrinkle and were marked from $3.99). All tossed on a sheet pan with two tablespoons of olive oil, salt, pepper, and a teaspoon of dried oregano. Roasted at 425 for twenty-two minutes, until the vegetables were caramelized at the edges and the cherry tomatoes had burst.

I served the dinner in shallow bowls. Polenta on the bottom, the roasted vegetables piled on top, a final small crumble of feta and a drizzle of olive oil. The colors in the bowl were the gold of the polenta, the deep red of the roasted onion, the dark green of the zucchini, the burst red of the cherry tomatoes, the white crumble of the feta, the golden drizzle of the olive oil. The bowl looked like the kind of bowl Cookie and Kate photograph for the cover of their cookbook. Total cost of the dinner: about $5.40 for three of us with a small portion of leftovers for my Tuesday Sonic-shift lunch.

Mama and Cody and I ate at the kitchen table at six. Mama said, after the first bite, baby, this is the kind of dinner those women on the cooking shows make on TV. Cody said, this would be on a menu at one of those new restaurants downtown. I am keeping both sentences in the green notebook in pen. We are getting fancier in this kitchen than I would have believed in March.

And the polenta itself, the technique, is going on my permanent rotation list. Polenta is one of those foods that is genuinely cheap — cornmeal is a few dollars a bag and lasts forever — and that I had been afraid of for no good reason because I had only ever seen it made on cooking shows in fancy kitchens. The wall is made of paper. The wall is always made of paper. The polenta wall came down on Sunday for $0.30 of cornmeal and twenty minutes of stirring. I am writing that on the page so I will remember.

The X marks on the calendar are at fifty-nine. Thirty-one days to sentencing. The hat in Mama’s knitting bag is mostly done. The work shoes for Mama are under my bed. Cody’s books and tools are wrapped in newspaper in the back of the closet. The Christmas plan is intact. The cooking is holding. The household is holding. We are still here.

The recipe is below, the way Cookie and Kate wrote it. If you have the budget for goat cheese, use it — goat cheese is the right cheese here. If you do not, substitute parmesan and feta in the proportions I used: a half cup of parmesan plus a quarter cup of feta, both stirred in off the heat. The polenta technique is universal: bring water to a boil, pour the cornmeal in a slow stream while whisking, drop to low, stir for twenty minutes, finish with butter and cheese. Make this on a Sunday night in December. Eat it in a shallow bowl. Tell yourself this is what cooking-show women do. They do. Now you do too.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 40 min | Total Time: 55 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 cup coarse-ground yellow cornmeal (polenta)
4 cups vegetable broth
1 cup water
4 oz goat cheese, crumbled, plus more for topping
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 medium zucchini, cut into 1/2-inch half-moons
1 red bell pepper, seeded and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup cherry tomatoes
1 medium red onion, cut into thin wedges
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
Fresh parsley, chopped, for garnish

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 425°F. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper or foil.
Prep the vegetables. Add zucchini, bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, and red onion to the baking sheet. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons olive oil, then scatter garlic, thyme, and smoked paprika over the top. Season generously with salt and pepper and toss everything together until well coated. Spread into a single layer.
Roast the vegetables. Roast for 25–30 minutes, turning once halfway through, until the vegetables are tender and caramelized at the edges. Remove from oven and set aside.
Start the polenta. While the vegetables roast, combine vegetable broth and water in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt.
Cook the polenta. Reduce heat to medium-low. Slowly pour in the cornmeal in a thin, steady stream, whisking constantly to prevent lumps. Switch to a wooden spoon and stir frequently for 20–25 minutes, until the polenta pulls away from the sides of the pan and has a thick, creamy consistency.
Finish with cheese and butter. Remove polenta from heat. Stir in butter until melted, then fold in the crumbled goat cheese until fully incorporated and silky. Taste and adjust salt and pepper. If the polenta seems too thick, stir in a splash of warm water or broth.
Serve. Spoon polenta into wide, shallow bowls. Top generously with the roasted vegetables and their pan juices. Add an extra crumble of goat cheese and a scatter of fresh parsley. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Goat Cheese Polenta with Roasted Vegetables — The First Polenta I Ever Made (and the Cheese Substitution That Made It Possible)