Vegan polenta heart with shiitake mushrooms

So easy to make this vegan lunch with shiitake mushrooms (from carrefour in Como) and polenta taragna quick-cooking (instant) grains (any supermarket really in Como). In Italy and especially in Lombardia polenta is a traditional dish and they make it in this area a lot with cheese, now of course you can switch that to a vegan cheese but in my opinon, cooking it with only water is already great, so we just do that! :D ! We especially like the taragna polenta grains because they're a mix of both corn meal and grano saraceno (buckwheat) grains. We use the instant variety, but of course you can do the same with the non-instant if you prefer that :-)  

So we just clean and chop the mushrooms, fry or saute` them in a little olive oil and here we added parsley from our balcony herb garden (still a little left) and then cook the polenta grains with some boiling water for a few minutes, stirring frequently. Add some lettuce & buon appetito! 

I love easy, yummy cooking :D

Vegan polenta heart with shiitake mushrooms

Polenta taragna grains

Cooked polenta is easy to shape... so a heart it is :-)

Check out the shiitake mushroom beauties

Chopped them into smaller pieces & then fry them up

Oh hi there! I'm a polenta heart with mushrooms and lettuce

Peace & love <3