Week 3: Meal under $10 - Polenta Fries with White Bean, Sage and Pumpkin Ragout and Leek with Cashew Cheese Sauce

Price for four people: $9.34 New Zealand Dollars / $7.93 USD (full pricing info below)

This is not only a cheap meal, but one of my favourites too. The recipe is from Peter Berley's Modern Vegetarian Kitchen and I can't recommend both the recipe and book enough. Most of the recipes are quite simple, yet tend to get rave reviews from the harshest of critics (my kids). This recipe also shows that the difference between decent food and food you love is probably going to be a few decent ingredients. In this case it's using a good quality cinnamon quill, fresh sage rather than rubbed/dried sage and fresh ginger to turn what could just be a tomatoey mess into something special.

In addition to the polenta fries and ragout, I had a large leek laying about and some leftover thick cashew cheese which I had made to use as a panini filling. I added a little almond milk to thin it out for pouring over the leeks.

In total this came in comfortably under $10 to feed four, and there is still at least one more meal's worth of leftover ragout after my daughter asked for some in her lunch for school today. This is after four dinner servings have been taken out of the pot.

Polenta Fries

• 1 Cup Polenta - I use a fine polenta to lessen the cooking time
• 3 Cups Vegetarian Stock (check for gluten to confirm entire meal is gluten free)
• 1 Tbsp Olive Oil
• 1 Tsp Salt

1. Bring stock and oil to a boil.
2. Slowly add the polenta while whisking to avoid lumps.
3. Reduce to a low heat and cook until the desired consistency is reached. For me, it took about 5 minutes with instant polenta to reach a thick consistency.
4. Pour the polenta into a greased or non-stick container so that it's just over 1cm thick, then let it set in the fridge for at least an hour. I use a 20cm by 20cm baking pan for this.
5. Once the polenta is set it can be sliced in the pan into 1cm by 5cm 'fries.' The size isn't too important, which become evident when you my total lack of uniformity in the picture below.
6. Bake at 200C/400F for about 25-20 minutes, turning half way through cooking. The longer they cook the crunchier/more awesome they get. I didn't cook these for too long as I was in a hurry to get my kids fed.

You should end up with something like this, but probably beginning to brown for extra crunch. However, as the polenta is cooked before becoming fries it's entirely up to you how long you bake them for.

White Bean, Sage and Pumpkin Ragout

• 3 Tbsp Olive Oil
• 1 Large Onion, diced
• 500g Buttercup Pumpkin (or Butternut Squash, preferably), roughly chopped
• 5 Garlic Cloves, minced
• 1 Tbsp Minced Fresh Ginger
• 800g Canned Diced Tomatoes
• 3 Cups Cooked Haricot Beans (from 1 cup dried beans)
• 1 Tbsp Minced Fresh Sage
• 1 5cm Cinnamon Quill
• Salt and Pepper

1. Heat the oil over medium heat, then cook the onion and a little salt under the onion is softened.
2. Add the pumpkin, garlic and ginger and saute for about 5 minutes.
3. Stir in the tomatoes and raise the heat to bring to a boil.
4. Add the beans, sage and cinnamon. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 25-30 minutes until the squash is tender.
5. Remove the cinnamon and add some water if the ragout is too thick.
6. Season with salt and black pepper.

Leeks with Cashew Cheese Sauce

Cut the dark green top off the leek, sliced it in half lengthwise then chopped the leek halves into strips about half a cm wide. Once chopped wash the leek in a colander under a cold tap to get rid of the dirt that leeks love to bring with them to the store, then cook in a little olive oil and salt over a low heat until very tender (about 15 minutes). The cashew cheese sauce is the recipe you can find here, but without the chipotle added... I used about 4 tablespoons of the cashew cheese and thinned it with almond milk until it reached a good pouring consistency and threw it in the microwave for about a minute.

Pricing

The prices below are in New Zealand dollars, and some of them should be cheaper as they were bought for me from road-side vege markets and I don't know the price paid... the prices I've used are from a local supermarket in the city. I've also not priced the olive oil, salt or pepper... but it's negligible.

Polenta - 64c
Stock - 25c

Onion - 40c
Pumpkin - $1.25
Garlic - 30c
Ginger - 20c
Tomatoes - $1.66
Beans - $1.60
Sage - 15c
Cinnamon - 10c

Leek - $1.79
Cashew Cheese Sauce - $1 - This is a rough, and exaggerated, estimate


Notes:

• I use Massel's Chicken Style stock for polenta, as the flavour goes well with corn/polenta and it's gluten free.
• In the Modern Vegetarian Cookbook the ragout is served over soft polenta. I prefer the crunch of polenta fries so am happy to make the polenta a couple hours in advance. If you're pressed for time soft polenta is fine; just use 4 cups of liquid rather than 3, and serve in a bowl straight after cooking so it's still soft.
• I much prefer Butternut Squash in this recipe, but Buttercup Pumpkins were cheaper so I grabbed one. It would still come in under $10 with the squash and I would recommend it over the pumpkin.
• I actually used one 400g can of tomatoes and a few very ripe tomatoes that would otherwise have gone bad. For something that is going to cook a while I almost always use canned tomatoes.
• Normally the ragout is made with Great Northern Beans, but I used Haricot Beans as they are readily available at my local supermarket.