Roasted vegetables

This is my best approximation of the roasted vegetables I made for dinner last night. I took some hints from "Roasted Vegetables for Pasta" and "Roasted Winter Vegetables" in Moosewood Restaurant New Classics (mostly on how thick to cut up the vegetables) but I made a lot up myself, and didn't really measure anything. So take my amounts with a grain of salt.

You Will Need:

Equipment:

• a baking tray --- preferably not a baking sheet, as the vegetable dressing/marinade would leak off it and make a big mess in:
• an oven
• a big bowl for the vegetables
• a little bowl for making dressing/marinade in
• a garlic press although it's always okay to cut garlic instead of pressing it
• a whisk
• a knife for cutting up vegetables
• a cutting board

Ingredients

• Veggies
• 1 onion
• 1 carrot
• 1 green bell pepper
• 2 medium tomatoes
• 5 largish white mushrooms
• Dressing/Marinade
• olive oil
• balsamic vinegar
• dried thyme
• dried oregano
• salt
• fresh ground black pepper
• 4 cloves of garlic, pressed
• For Later
• fresh basil
• fresh-grated Parmesan cheese

What You Do:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

2. Cut the veggies up into roughly 1-inch square pieces (except the carrot: cut it in half lengthwise, then slice into 1/2-inch thick pieces). Put the veggies in the big bowl.

3. In the smaller bowl, whisk together maybe 1/4 cup of olive oil and 1/8 cup vinegar. Add big pinches (teaspoons?) of each of the dried herbs and salt, and grind in some pepper. Peel and clean the garlic; press it into the mixture as well. Whisk it together till it's more or less all one consistency.

4. Pour the dressinade over the veggies and toss till they're all coated. If it looks like you didn't make enough to coat them all, make another (smaller) mixture of oil, vinegar, herbs, salt, and pepper, add it in, and repeat the tossing/coating process.

5. If you plan to serve the veggies on pasta (as I did) or rice (I bet this would be good, too), start water boiling now, or maybe a little earlier. I didn't.

6. Spread the veggies out on the baking tray (I filled a 10" x 15" tray to heaping, so you might want to use two trays if you've got them) and bake in the oven for 15 minutes. Take them out of the oven, mix in 1/8 to 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil (I cut it up quickly with scissors) and return them to the oven.

7. After another 10 minutes, take the vegetables out of the oven and stir one more time. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper if you like, and return them to the oven one last time.

8. When the pasta or rice is done, drain it and serve immediately with heaping scoops of roasted veggies spread on top; grate a little Parmesan on for added tasty goodness. Yum!

Notes

Total preparation and cooking time was about an hour, but I had some pasta timing issues. It might have been nice to have a few more tomatoes, and maybe some zucchini/squash in the veggie mix, but I worked with what I had. Any more veggies, and I definitely would have needed another baking tray. There's a lot of cleanup for this meal, as the long equipment list might suggest; also, the baking tray got pretty splattered with dressinade as everything cooked. Finally, this would probably feed four people; as there were only two of us last night, I'm looking forward to putting the leftovers to good use (soup, maybe, or omelet/omelette fillings).

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Jongleur for helping cut up the vegetables (if you can combine that step and the dressinade-making step, it speeds things up a bit). Also Ouroboros for /msg'ing me when I accidentally hit stumbit early.

Roasted vegetables can be an amazingly easy one pan dish, needing little attention while one attends to other things.

Grab veggies, heavy on the root types – one combination I like is this:

• one pound of new potatoes (leave the skin on)
• a bunch of carrots
• a package of mushrooms (mixed or pre-sliced...whatever)
• a bunch of asparagus
• a bag of cherry tomatoes
• salt and pepper to taste
• Italian Seasoning herbs mix (a lot, at least 1 tablespoon)
• a whole garlic, peeled and just broken into cloves
• about ¼ cup olive oil (enough to coat the veggies lightly)
• some fresh parsley leaves (1/2 a bunch or so)

Cut the veggies into chunks, one or two bite sized. Place them in a large baking dish (one with sides). Pour on the seasonings and the oil. Toss with 2 forks.

Bake at a high temperature until the potatoes are fork temperature. Likely 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 45 minutes. Do not cover and toss to recoat with oil once or twice during the backing time

The dish is not complicated and depends for flavor on the use of good ingredients. The high temperature caramelizes the sugars and adds a depth of flavor.

One pan, 2 forks, a cutting board and a knife … 15 minutes prep time, 45 minutes to cook - an oven or a fire … water to rinse the veggies, that's all one needs.

Serve with some roast beast, after some nice cream of celery soup.