Poached Egg atop Bacon and Polenta

I checked out a cooking book from the library last week. I went though half the book and literally drooled when I saw this recipe. So first off, sorry library, I may have dirtied a page in this book. This was a really simple recipe to follow through, I think the most difficult part was standing over the stove stirring the polenta for a full 25 minutes, and sweating the entire time. The recipe called for prosciutto, which is a dry cured ham, but it was really expensive, so I substituted bacon, which was great. All in all, the dish was pretty much well worth it. Let me know if you try it out and how you like it!

Ingredients:
1 cup polenta (corn meal)
3 cups water
4 tablespoons butter (divided)
8 strips of bacon
4 eggs
4 teaspoons of pesto


1. Mix polenta and water in a pot and cook, constantly stirring, for 25 minutes until thick.
2. Add in 2 tablespoons of butter. (I also added a teaspoon of salt because I wanted it a bit saltier).
3. Pour polenta into a buttered 8x9 inch baking tray and let cool for ~10 minutes.
4. Cut polenta into 4 squares.
5. Put 2 tablespoons of butter into a pan.
6. Carefully transfer one square at a time in the pan and cook until brown on both sides, turning once.
7. Remove polenta squares out of the pan and keep warm.
8. Cut bacon to the same length as the polenta squares and cook until crispy.
9. Bring a pot of water to a boil and slowly place in eggs. (I cracked the eggs into a cup, one a at a time, and then poured it into the boiling water, one at a time.) Cook eggs for 3 minutes.
10. Assemble your polenta squares by place 2 layers of bacon on top of the polenta. Top that with your poached egg. Spoon the pesto on top.
11. Eat and be happy!


Price breakdown:
Polenta: $0.99


I had almost all these things in my refrigerator already, except for the polenta, which I bought from the 99 cents store.


**Note: I forgot to put the pesto on, when I did, I forgot to take a picture of it. Also, I made 50% more than the recipe called for (hopefully that made sense--so, I used 1 1/2 cup polenta, 41/2 cups water, 6 tablespoons butter, 10 strips of bacon, 6 eggs, 6 teaspoons of pesto).