For those lucky enough to live in Melbourne or near Lygon St, there’s a great Vegetarian Cafe called vege2go that opened up last year which serves some really delicious Italian dishes with fresh and healthy side dishes.  If you do happen do live near there, it’s well worth stopping in and trying out a meal.

Now this dish is inspired by their baked polenta which is amazing.  The only problem when I started cooking this was that I didn’t have enough polenta, so I reached for a similar grain - semolina.

The great thing about using semolina is that it thickened just the same as polenta and my meal was saved.

This does have a little cheese mixed through, but for vegans, it’s not too hard to omit the cheese and add some nutritional yeast instead for a cheese flavour.

Makes:

• 8 cubes

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup polenta
• 1/4 cup semonlina
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 250 grams mushrooms, sliced thin
• 1 tab “chicken style” vegetable stock
• 1-2 cups water
• cracked pepper
• 50 grams mozzarella
• 1 tsp garlic

Sauce

• 1/2 cup tomato passata
• cracked pepper
• pinch salt
• pinch sugar
• 8 capers
• 1 tsp basil
• 2 tbs red wine vinegar

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C or 370 F.
2. In a large pot, brown off the onions.
3. In a seperate pot place all the ingredients for your sauce and simmer.
4. Pour in the semolina and polenta and add the stock and water.  Allow to boil.
5. Mix in the remaining ingredients minus some of the mozzarella to add on top.
6. Allow to cool a little and turn off the heat for the sauce.
7. In a casserole dish and some tomato sauce to the bottom and pour the polenta on top, leaving the sides.
8. On the sides, pour the tomato sauce in and put some on top.
9. Add the mozzarella to the top of the casserole dish.
10. Place in the oven for 30 minutes.
11. Allow to cool totally before serving.  The cooling process allows the polenta and semolina to thicken.