Everything Roasted.

I know I have mentioned at least a few times that this is one of my cooking mottos. I am yet to discover a vegetable or fruit that doesn’t taste good roasted in the oven, their juices caramelized, concentrated, and full of flavour.

Roasting is also easy work. Lazily chop up ingredients. Toss with oil, butter, or fat, maybe drizzle on a little vinegar or some other acid, and add some herbs, salt, sugar, etc for flavour. Pop it in the oven and go lay down on the couch for 20-45 minutes. You may have to get up once to shake the pan or flip the ingredients over.

Eat.

Recipe: Roasted Vegetables with Pear and Sage

You can substitute just about any vegetables for those that I used in my mix. Thyme, rosemary, and savoury are good herbs for roasting if you don’t have or want to use sage.

Keep in mind when preparing ingredients that different vegetables cook at different times. For example, I find that potatoes cook faster than dense root vegetables like turnips, so I chop the turnips more thinly. This way everything goes in at the same time but finishes at a similar level of doneness. Nothing comes out undercooked or burned. However, with vegetables like green beans I tend to hold them back and toss them in at least 15 or so minutes after everything else — they always char to a crisp when I don’t take this extra precaution.

Ingredients:

• 6 small potatoes, sliced into thirds or fourths
• 1 large turnip, sliced slightly thinner than the potatoes
• 1 pear, sliced as thinly as the potato
• 4 thick slices Delicata squash (skin on), chopped in half
• 1 small onion, chopped into 6 pieces
• 4-6 fresh sage leaves
• A few tablespoons olive oil or substitute fat (bacon grease works)
• Sea salt to taste (try using Salomoia Bolognese)

Toss everything except the salt together in a roasting pan or dish and cook at 400 degrees F for approximately 35-40 minutes. Make sure the sage leaves get a little oil on them as this will allow them to get nice and crispy.

Check for the densest vegetables for doneness at the halfway point and flip over the ingredients using a spatula or spoon so that the vegetables are equally roasted on all sides.

Salt to taste and serve warm with the sage leaves crumbled on top. This is also good with a dollop of Homemade Tomato Ketchup.

See also: Roasted Green Tomatoes, Roasted Green Beans, and Oven-Roasted Tomato Soup.