Johnny Blaze Cakes

February 7, 2016

We came home from our Ottolenghi-fest with a jar full of pickled watermelon rind and Cindy wasted no time in coming up with a plan to use some. She figured that our Vegan Soul Kitchen book was likely to have some dishes that would benefit from watermelon pickle, and pointed me in the direction of these Johnny Blaze cakes for a Sunday night dinner. These are pretty basic polenta cakes really (certainly much easier to make than the pumpkin and kale stuffed version I occasionally bust out for potlucks). They're relatively dry, with a nice warm flavour thanks to the cayenne and jalapenos. You do need a good accompaniment, and the tangy watermelon pickles were ideal. We also whipped up a batch of the chilled citrus broccoli salad from the same book for a simple buy very effective dinner combo.

Johnny Blaze cakes
(adapted very slightly from Bryant Terry's Vegan Soul Kitchen)

1.5 cups polenta

1/2 cup wholemeal self-raising flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/4-1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2.5 cups soy milk

2 jalapenos, seeded and sliced finely

oil for frying

Combine the polenta, flour, salt and cayenne in a large bowl.

Bring the soy milk to the boil in a saucepan and the slowly pour it into the polenta mix, stirring as you go. Stir in the jalapeno and refrigerate the batter for about half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 120°C (this is just to keep the early batches of the corn cakes warm while you fry the rest).

Add a tablespoon of oil to a large frying pan and place on medium-high heat. Shape little discs out of about 1/4 cup of the batter mix and add them to the pan. Once the bottom has set nicely (about a minute) you can shape them into cakes - you want them about 1cm thick. Lower the heat and then cook for 5-8 minutes on each side until they're golden brown.

I was going 4 cakes to a batch and got through the whole mixture in three batches - transfer the cooked cakes to an oven tray and pop them in the low oven while you're frying the rest.