The ridiculous but beautiful unicorn rainbow food trend has waned since it's boom in 2018 but cool rainbow foods are still in, especially with heirloom varieties of vegetables making vegetables come in more colors than we knew possible.
Miller's All Day in Charleston came out with what they called unicorn grits, which are grits milled out of corn that's red all the way through, and they became a bit of an internet sensation. My local miller, Ken DuBard of Congaree Milling Company, recently showed me his newest product, roasted red polenta, and I knew from their beautiful pink hue that these could be my version of unicorn grits, with lots of sautéed vegetables and cheese, just like I like my grits. You can debate the difference between grits and polenta with Ken, but I'm calling them all grits. Thanks for the corn, Ken!
Rainbow Grits with Red Polenta
Ingredients
- ⅓ cup roasted red polenta
- 1 cup water
- ½ tbsp butter
- 1 dash garlic powder
- 1 tsp olive oil
- 6 rainbow baby carrots sliced into rounds
- 3 mini rainbow bell peppers diced
- 8 rainbow cherry tomatoes sliced in half
- 3 scallions chopped
- ⅓ cup Parmesan cheese shredded
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Put the dried polenta, water, butter, and garlic powder in a small saucepan that has a tight fitting lid. Mix together thoroughly and put on a burner over high heat with no lid yet.
- Once the grits have come to a boil, stir with a spoon, reduce the heat to medium low, and put the lid all the way on the pot. Cook for 8 minutes.
- In the meantime, heat a small frying pan over medium heat with 1 tsp of olive oil. Once it is heated, add in the carrots, peppers, tomatoes, and scallions. Lightly salt the vegetables.
- Saute the vegetables, flipping occasionally. They should be done in about 5 minutes, but keep an eye on them so they don't burn.
- Remove the vegetables from the heat. Once the polenta is done, remove it from heat as well. Add in the shredded cheese, but reserve a small handful for garnish.
- Mix the cheese in and put the lid back on so the cheese can steam into the polenta.
- When ready to serve, spoon the polenta in a bowl. Arrange the vegetables and and reserved cheese for garnish on top. Salt and pepper to taste.
- This recipe doubles easily.
A few recipe notes: If you don't really care that much about the pink grits base, then you can absolutely use white, yellow, or even blue grits as a base for these. The color of the grits does not affect the taste, especially with the bounty of vegetables on top. I do recommend using a light colored cheese though, as to not muddy up the color, so you won't want to mix yellow cheddar into pink or blue grits, though of course that would be fine in a yellow or white grits base.
You also don't have to be so precise with the number of vegetables used, I just wanted to give a good jumping off point for what would be a reasonable amount for one serving!