A watercolour of soft pale polenta with dark red tomato sauce spooned into the centre
Generated with OpenAI gpt-image-1
Adapted from Polenta with a simple tomato sauce

Polenta with tomato and anchovy

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Polenta (instant).

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves
2
Burners
1
Pans
1
Water
0.9 L
Active
12 min
Total
20 min

Ingredients

Polenta is badly underrated as trip food. It is light, it keeps indefinitely, it is cheap, and the instant sort is ready in five minutes. A hot, soft base that turns a small amount of sauce into a full plate.

Make the sauce first, because polenta waits badly and sauce waits well.

  1. Oil in the pan, anchovies in with it over a low heat. Break them up; after two minutes they will have vanished.
  2. Garlic, chilli, oregano, thirty seconds. Then the tomatoes. Simmer 12 to 15 minutes until thick. Taste for salt, with the anchovies in there it may need none at all.
  3. Tip the sauce into a bowl or mug. Rinse the pan.
  4. Bring 600 ml of well-salted water to the boil. Rain the polenta in with one hand while stirring hard with the other, all at once and it lumps irreversibly. Stir for the time on the packet, usually about five minutes. It should drop from the spoon in a thick ribbon; add a splash of water if it goes stiffer than that.
  5. Polenta into the bowls, sauce over, a serious amount of olive oil.

Serves 2.

What this was adapted from

Polenta with a simple tomato sauce: the northern Italian weekday staple

  • slow-cooked coarse polenta → instant polenta

    Traditional polenta is forty minutes of stirring, which on a single burner with limited gas is not a realistic proposition. Instant polenta is a genuine step down in texture and takes five minutes; this is a trade made deliberately rather than pretended away.

  • butter and parmesan to finish → olive oil and anchovy

    Neither butter nor parmesan keeps without refrigeration. Anchovy supplies the salt and savoury depth the cheese would, and olive oil the richness of the butter.