Quick and easy polenta fills a craving at supper

Do you ever go through phases with certain dishes, practically living off them for months until one day you just … stop? When my husband and I first moved in together, polenta featured big in our weekly meal routine. It was easy, it was cheap, and it was darn good, especially with a handful of shredded cheese stirred into the pot.

But time flies and tastes change. I recently realized it had been years since I last made polenta for a simple weeknight meal. This one-bowl meal is a reminder of how good warm polenta and a handful of fresh ingredients can truly be.

My unintended polenta hiatus might have stretched even longer if it weren’t for a recipe from Sarah Copeland’s book “Feast,” an easy supper of polenta topped with sauted winter greens, a poached egg and blue cheese. Finding this recipe produced such an instant craving that I made it that very night, hitting three grocery stores in pursuit of radicchio. (Worth it.)

This recipe is an easy mix of things that I almost always have in my refrigerator – chicken sausage, a bag of baby spinach and a handful of cherry tomatoes.

Sliced into thick coins and seared golden, the chicken sausage makes a chewy counterpart to both the creamy polenta and the silky strands of garlic-scented spinach. The cherry tomatoes add a pop of flavor and color, while a poached egg over each bowl brings it all together. I used a spicy andouille-style sausage for my recipe, but you could use whichever kind you happen to have.

The beautiful part of this meal is that it comes together in literally 30 minutes. Get the polenta on the stove first, then work on the spinach and sausage topping. Put the eggs in the water to poach just before you’re ready to eat and assemble the bowls as they’re cooking. The whole meal is on the table amazingly fast.

This story was originally published March 4, 2014 at 11:51 AM with the headline "Quick and easy polenta fills a craving at supper."