Sheet-Pan Polenta & Italian Sausage
...with roasted peppers, tomatoes & basil. Plus, plus 5 Dinners in Real Life.
Hello Friends! It’s October!
I’m writing this early on Thursday morning, coffee cup in hand. Out of my dining room window, my neighborhood is socked in by fog. By this afternoon, it will be close to 90° and the cool, fresh fog will feel like a dream that didn’t really happen. So goes October, a month when Southern CA gets a few hours of fall each day before intense summer weather returns with a vengeance.
I’m not sure what the weather is like where you live, but the recipe I’m sharing today is a perfect fit for climates where it’s still hot and climates where it’s cooling down. It’s an easy sheet-pan meal with comforting sausage and sliced polenta intermingling with the bright acidity of tomatoes, the sweetness of bell peppers and fragrant fresh basil.
Recipe of the Week: Sheet-Pan Sliced Polenta with Italian Sausage, Peppers, Tomatoes & Basil
Last week I talked about how to make creamy polenta. This week, I’m sharing a super-easy recipe that uses store-bought sliced polenta. Have you seen tubes of polenta on the shelf at the grocery store? This recipe for sliced polenta with Italian sausage is a great way to use it.
You can make this dinner in the four easy steps outlined below (Find the full recipe here → HERE)
Step 1: Combine cherry tomatoes, mini bell peppers, chopped shallot and sausage on a foil-lined sheet-pan. Toss generously in olive oil. Bake 20 minutes at 450F.
Step 2: Add sliced polenta to the pan. Roast 10 minutes more.
Step 3: If you want more crispy browning, broil the sheet-pan for about 2 minutes. Top with lots of fresh basil before serving.
Recipe Tips
If you have a hungry group, double the recipe and make two sheet-pans. Or, consider roasting a second sheet-pan of veggies (like zucchini and/or squash) at the same time.
You can add a can a drained chickpeas to the sheet-pan.
I often serve an arugula salad on the side, lightly dressed in olive oil and lemon.
Cheese lovers! You can grate parmesan over the entire sheet-pan after it roasts or add shredded mozzarella in the last 5 minutes for a cheesy, gooey topping.
I let the sheet-pan cool for a few minutes out of the oven, then set the entire sheet-pan on the table. It looks pretty, and minimizes dishes.
I make this meal with sweet Italian sausage but you can use any type of sausage that you like. Raw sausage works best with the cooking time; if using pre-cooked sausage you might want to wait and add it to the sheet-pan at the same time as the polenta.
5 Dinners in Real Life
I’m always curious about what other families are eating. Aren’t you? I hope that my week of real life dinners will provide helpful recipes & cooking ideas for your family. Here’s what my crew ate last week:
Monday: We ate the meal I shared above and it was delicious! I served the sliced polenta with sausage & peppers with a warm baguette and arugula salad.
Tuesday: Tofu bowls to the rescue! We ate dinner in shifts on Tuesday; Sorin walked in the door from work at 5pm just as I was walking out the door to take Ophelia to swim practice. I had prepped sliced cucumber, grated carrot, snap peas, tofu and tahini soy sauce dressing for everyone to combine in a bowl with either angel hair pasta or rice. Or, like one of my kids, you could choose to just eat the noodles with butter 🙂
Wednesday: I finally perfected that turkey meatball recipe I’ve been wanting to update on my blog. After I took a photo of the finished recipe we ate the turkey meatballs with roasted vegetables. As soon as I have time to update the turkey meatball recipe on my blog I’ll share it here, too!
Thursday: I tried a recipe for slow-cooker chicken ragu with herbed ricotta from the NY Times cooking section and my family gave it a thumbs up, even without the herbed ricotta (I mixed in a few spoonfuls of creamy creme fraiche instead. I also skipped the red pepper flakes). I served the chicken-and-tomato sauce over Instant Pot egg noodles. I didn’t serve any vegetables with the meal because sometimes that’s how life goes!
Friday: Leftovers!
Cookbooks
If you like the flavors of Korean food, Korean American has a wide array of recipes that will show you how to bring Korean flavors into your kitchen. It’s written by Eric Kim, a food writer and son of two Korean immigrants who shares recipes and essays that embrace the harmony and tension of growing up between two cultures.
It’s about all the beautiful things that come with being different, and all the hard things that come with that, too
That’s it for this week, the fog is already burning off which means my quiet morning hours are over. I have a busy day ahead of me - more on that soon when I update you on some interesting (and good!) changes in my work life.
Enjoy your weekend!
Jenny