Botswana - Baked Polenta

Ah, Botswana. The setting of one of my favourite series of books The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. Books that led me to try Redbush tea and fantasize about running my own detective agency. :D

I chose this recipe for two reasons. One, there's half a bag of polenta in the kitchen cupboard that wants using up. Two, I need to have another go at liking polenta. Fingers crossed!

Ingredients:

Polenta
Tomato chutney
Cheese

Yep, three ingredients ^_^

 Make up the polenta according to the packet's instructions.

 After a few minutes cooking and stirring vigorously (where's JD when I need him) it should look like this (the consistency of mashed potato).

 Spread the polenta in a baking dish of some sort.

 Cover with a layer of tomato chutney. This chutney is startlingly red in colour. I should've made some chutney myself, I'm ashamed.

 Cover with a layer of grated cheese.

 Pop in the oven at 200C for about 15 minutes until the cheese has melted properly.

 I served it with baked chicken breasts and peas.

The melted cheese and chutney together were delicious. But that's where the deliciousness ended. Polenta isn't for me. It's bland and the consistency is like mashed potato but only in a way that makes you wish you were eating mashed potato instead. Neither of the kids wanted to try it. In fact they wanted to try it so little that Leigh came up to me while I was taking the ingredient picture and asked what I was making. After I explained she said she didn't want to try it. Before I'd even made it!! (I could make a whole other blog post about how annoyed this makes me feel). I tried the polenta in various combinations with the cheese, chutney, peas and chicken but I didn't really like any of them with the polenta. So I just gave in and ate the cheese and chutney combo off the top and threw the polenta away. Sorry Botswana :)