Curried Baby Carrots with Cheesy Polenta

Carrots. Cooked in their own juice — then drowned in butter, spiked with curry leaves, chilli and a solid smack of curry powder. These curried beauties are banging on their own but taken to dangerous new levels when spooned over a salty, cheesy polenta pillow. This one works as a gutsy side or a veg-forward main, pair it with a steak if you're feeling primal.

Curried carrots on a bed of cheesy polenta

Curried Carrot & Cheesy Polenta Recipe

Serves: 4 as a side, 2 as a main

Ingredients:

• ½ tbsp coconut oil (or a neutral oil)

• 50g butter (half now, half later)

• 2 bay leaves

• 1 garlic clove, crushed

• Handful of fresh curry leaves (5g if you want to be precise)

• 700g baby carrots

• 300ml carrot juice*

• ½ tsp sugar (skip it if your using store bough carrot juice, as a lot of them are sweeter)

• 1 tsp chilli powder

• 1½ tbsp Malaysian Baba’s curry powder (or curry powder of choice)

🧃 Homemade carrot juice? You’ll need about 650g carrots to get there. Carrot-ception, innit.

Cheesy Polenta

Makes enough for 4

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (144g) fine polenta

• 720ml filtered water + ¾ cup held back for late-stage rescue

• 30g butter

• 55g parmesan, grated like your will to meal prep

• Salt to taste (aka more than you think)

• A few cracks of black pepper

Method:

Curried Carrots:

1. Juicing? Juice the carrots and marvel at how annoying it is to clean a juicer.

2. Heat coconut oil + 25g butter in a pan. Chuck in bay, garlic, and curry leaves. Infuse gently. No burning. keep stirring.

3. Toss in your baby carrots and crank up the heat. Splash in that carrot juice. Maybe a splash of water too depending on your pan. You want them to cook in their juices.

4. Add sugar, chilli powder, and curry powder. Stir to combine.

5. Lid on for a few mins, then off. Let them simmer and bubble away, you want the sauce to be reducing but not so much that the carrots can't cook.

6. Cook till carrots are tender — ~20 mins.
   

Cheesy Polenta:

1. Add polenta to cold water in a pan. Salt early. Start whisking like your life depends on it.

2. As it thickens, lob in the butter. Keep going — no one likes raw-tasting polenta.

3. Cheese goes in towards the end. Stir, season, taste. Needs more salt? You bet it does.

4. Save it from going stodgy with that reserved water if it tightens up too much before being cooked out.

Top tips:

• Polenta without salt is just hot corn sadness. Taste as you go and don’t be stingy.

• Polenta Ratio 101: The secret is the 5:1 water to polenta ratio. That’s 5 parts water (720ml) to 1 part polenta (144g) — and keep ¾ cup back for emergency loosen-ups. The magic happens in 15–20 mins if you're using fine polenta.

• If you have coarse polenta you can blitz it in a blender to create a finer grain.