We love polenta in our house, its delicious and hearty and easy to make. Most of the time I like to make it from scratch but Trader Joe’s makes an awesome log of polenta that is hard to resist. While walking down the aisles last night manfriend requested some polenta for dinner and I had to agree it sounded fantastic.
While day dreaming today at work, deciding what to throw on this polenta I decided to throw together a homemade vegan pesto and throw some veggies on it. We’re past the gluten free phase of our lives but we are working to eliminate dairy and so I’ve come back to my vegan roots. I’ve thrown together a good amount of pesto in my day, and it’s fairly easy but trying to make it without parmesan would be a bit trickier.
Most of the usual suspects were there-olive oil, basil, garlic, though I decided to use a base of walnuts instead of pine nuts, add a bit of lemon for some acid and nutritional yeast instead of parmesan. I have to say I’m really happy with the result, its super creamy and definitely the star of this dish.
I roasted the polenta in the oven, cooked the veggies on the stove and threw it all together with the sauce. Easy peasy weeknight polenta, who could resist?
Vegan Pesto Polenta with Zucchini and Tomato
Prep Time : 10 minutes | Cook Time : 20 minutes | Serves : 4
Ingredients
1 log of prepared polenta
1 cup cherry tomatoes
2 small zucchini
Olive Oil / Avocado Oil
Salt & Pepper
Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 400. Slice polenta into 12 even slices and place on baking sheet, coat with avocado oil and sprinkle with salt and peppers. Put polenta into oven and set timer for 10 minutes.
2. While polenta is in the oven, slice zucchini into quarters and then small slices. Slice tomatoes in half.
3. Saute zucchini in olive oil on medium high heat for 5 minutes and add tomatoes. Turn heat to high and sautee for another 8-10 minutes until cooked thoroughly.
4. Check on polenta, after about 10 minutes, flip over and turn oven to low broil. Cook for another 10 minutes until edges are crispy.
5. Remove from oven and layer polenta with cooked veggies and top with vegan polenta (recipe below).
Vegan Pesto Sauce
Ingredients
1/2 cup walnuts
1 bunch of basil
2 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
1 lemon
1/8 cup Olive OIl
Salt to taste
Instructions
1. Place all ingredients in blender to combine. Start with amounts listed and adjust for consistency preference, you may need more olive oil but just keep adding a bit of the ingredients to get a consistency you like.
Give this a try some night when you want something healthy, delicious and easy! Enjoy!
A Dame's Life 
Like how you got creative with pesto, substituting walnuts and parmesan cheese . Will have to try polenta log, does not look very appealing in the store. jk
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