The great discovery of the late 20th Century in Scotland was that vegetables taste a whole lot better roasted in a hot oven rather than boiled to oblivion in heavily salted water. COP 26 next month will challenge us all to cut meat from our diet at least 2 days a week. The spiralling cost of beef, lamb and pork is another valid reason to do so.
You can successfully roast almost any root vegetable, potatoes spring to mind! The secret is cut to similar sized pieces, seasoned well with herbs and spices, and moistened with olive or vegetable oil. The choice is extensive. Parsnips, pumpkins, beetroots, and carrots. Courgettes, bell peppers, sweet peppers, aubergines. Sweetness can be added with onions, red onions, spring onions or shallots. Fennel and sweet corn pieces work well too.
Very hard root vegetables can be par boiled in boiling salted water for 10 minutes to start the cooking process. Add layers of extra flavour with whole squashed garlic cloves, woody herbs like thyme, bay and rosemary. Sweetness can be added with honey or balsamic vinegar.
Roast the veg when you are using your oven for other cooking. Make double. One lot to serve as supper, the rest to make a roast vegetable frittata the next day or toss with olive oil and garlic and throw over a plate of pasta.
Ingredients:
Any combination of the following:
2 red peppers cored and deseeded
4-5 sweet green peppers
2 courgettes
2 aubergines
2 tomatoes
Half unwaxed lemon, rind and juice
2 shallots, halved
1 red onion, quartered
2 cloves garlic, squashed but unpeeled
Sea salt and black pepper
2 fresh bay leaves
Leaves stripped from 7-8 sprigs fresh thyme, or a teaspoon dry.
3-4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
balsamic vinegar or red wine vinegar
Method:
Pre -heat Oven Gas 8/230C
Choose a heavy roasting tin, big enough to hold the veg in one layer.
Prepare the vegetables.
Slice the peppers into strips lengthwise. Cut the sweet green peppers in half.
Cut the courgettes, aubergines, and tomatoes into similar sized pieces (about 4cm square).
Throw all the vegetables into the roasting tin.
Scatter across the pieces of red onion, shallot and garlic.
Add the lemon rind, squeeze the juice and toss in the remaining pieces.
Season well and add the herbs.
Add the olive oil and use your hands to toss everything together so that everything is well coated.
Roast on the top shelf of the oven for 20.
Turn the veg and splash with some red wine or balsamic vinegar to sweeten the final flavour.
Finish roasting a further 5 minutes.
Mary Contini OBE is a writer and Director of Valvona & Crolla ltd. We are happy to welcome you in our CaffèBar and shop again, open all day. Book and order online: www. valvonacrolla.com Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. www.richardsonsofwhitehaven.co.uk
Subscribe to The Herald and don't miss a single word from your favourite writers by clicking here
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19496323.subscribe-herald-just-2/
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here