Sunday lunch: Roasted Root Vegetables

A winter favorite: roasted root vegetables.

This easily varied, super-simple recipe is something we make every winter when we find ourselves with odds and ends left in the fridge. It's a way to use up any hard root vegetables you might have on hand - that can include carrots, parsnips, turnips, potatoes, beets, sweet potatoes...etc. Don't mix in softer, summer vegetables because they will burn during the time the others need to cook through.

Here's the basic formula, from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything (D4SA required reading):

Roasted Root Vegetables

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, butter, or a mixture
1 1/2 - 2 lbs mixed root vegetables, peeled and cut into 1 1/2 - 2 inch chunks
several springs fresh thyme, or about 1 tbsp fresh rosemary leaves (optional)
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 head garlic, broken into unpeeled cloves (optional)
onion cut into quarters (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 425F.

2. In a large bowl, toss the chopped root vegetables in the oil and herbs with salt and pepper. Dump onto a baking sheet so that the vegetables are approximately in a single layer.

3. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes, stirring or shaking about every ten minutes.

4. If you are using garlic, DON'T include it from the start - instead, add it at the 30 minute mark. (If you add it earlier, it will burn.)

5. After 30 minutes, continue to check every ten minutes or so until the vegetables are done. It should take about 45 minutes to an hour total, depending on the size of the vegetables and your oven.

Christmas Dinner 2: The Kugel Strikes Back

Clockwise, starting at top: cornbread, cranberry-beet sauce, quick-pickled collards, mushroom-leek kugel, mashed potatoes, gingered collards, and turnips in mustard sauce.

This was the sequel to last week's Christmas dinner. Like all good sequels, it is primarily derivative of the first dinner, but with a few new twists. In addition to the gingered collards, we made a quick pickle (more or less this, but without the pineapple). We also substituted Tokyo turnips in mustard sauce for the red cabbage. In this dish, the turnips are fried until lightly browned, braised in stock, and finally tossed in a thickened mustard-stock sauce.

And with that, we put Christmas dinner 2009 to a rest...or did we??

Saturday dinner: Roasted Root Vegetables

Quinoa with roasted root vegetables: sweet potato, white Tokyo turnips, and red carrots.

Roasted root vegetables are an extremely easy winter meal. Basically any combination of veggies like turnips or rutabaga, potatoes and sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips, beets, etc, can be tossed in olive oil (with sage, rosemary, thyme or other mint-family spices if you have them) and spread onto a baking sheet for roasting. This is done at 425F for about 45 minutes to an hour - but the only assistance you need to give it is an occasional stir. Add a couple cloves unpeeled garlic for the last half hour so that it doesn't get too burnt.

Saturday lunch: Fall Feast

Butternut squash braised with spices (from Madhur Jaffrey via Nate - thanks Nate!), turnip greens with roasted cashews in sesame oil, and cornbread.

We made the cornbread with local whole wheat bread flour, which in our opinion really improved the flavor and texture. We also omitted the canola oil that was in the original recipe (since Giselle has purged the canola from the house) and added an extra egg instead.

The turnips themselves are destined for another recipe later this week, but today we used their greens, which don't store very well. One nice way to add a little protein and bulk to greens is to throw in some roasted chopped nuts, so that's what we did.

These butternut squash were an AMAZING saturated dark orange color on the inside, as you can see in the photo of their innards below.


squash, deconstructed

They also provided the opportunity to make one of our favorite snacks - roasted winter squash seeds. This is a fun thing to do anytime you carve a pumpkin or make any variety of winter squash for dinner. First, pick out the seeds from the pulp and wash them in a few changes of water until they are fairly clean:



Pat as dry as possible with paper towels. There are a few ways to go, flavor-wise, with the actual roasting: one option is to stir the seeds with some olive oil and salt. Another is to stir them with a clear oil (we used peanut), some ground cinnamon, and a little sugar. Either way, next spread the seeds into a single layer on a baking sheet, and roast in the oven at 350F for about a half hour, stirring occasionally so they roast evenly.


cinnamon-sugar seeds

Tuesday: cleaning out our fridge...

Broiled haddock, Tokyo turnips steamed with their greens and tossed in olive oil, and wild rice.

This is our last home-cooked dinner before heading to Iceland on Thursday - so when we stop showing up in your google reader, don't worry - it's not broken. We'll be back August 16th, so regular posting will resume shortly thereafter.

Mimicking the icebergs we're shortly going to see, here are some peeled turnips: