Roast Vegetables

Appetizing, colorful and stuffed with flavor, roast vegetables make the perfect accompaniment to the weekend joint.

This is such a simple, economical and versatile dish that once you grasp the basic principle the variations are endless. And the leftovers make a delicious cold salad.

All you need do is select the vegetables you want to accompany your roast, cut them into evenly sized pieces and cook them using the basic method given below. Among the vegetables you could use are the following:

Potatoes, squash, bell peppers, onions, zucchini, parsnips, turnips, carrots, sweet potato, leeks and swedes. In fact, just about any vegetable other than leaves and pulses is suitable. Here's my cooking method:

Put your prepared veggies into a roasting dish big enough for them to lie in a single layer. I don't peel mine, I just scrub them clean, but that's purely a matter of choice. I also often add a whole head of garlic, peeled and divided into cloves.

Peeling a head of garlic is super simple if you microwave it on high for about 10 seconds. The cloves will fall out of their skins. Once roasted they take on a wonderful creamy, nutty flavor not dissimilar to roasted chestnuts (which you could use instead).

Scatter some fresh, chopped rosemary or mixed dried herbs over the dish and then drench liberally with olive oil. Pop this mix into the oven along with the roast and turn the veggies over each 20 minutes or so.

How long you cook them for will depend on two things - the temperature at which you roast the meat and the depth of color you want to achieve. I find that one hour at 180C, 350F, is ideal to produce perfectly cooked vegetables still retaining their original color.

You may need to experiment a little to get the result you want, but it can't really go wrong. Even when 'over-cooked', vegetables prepared in this way retain a wonderful caramelized flavor and the colors simply become deeper and richer.

Please note, however, that potatoes cooked like this will not brown in the usual way. Well, they will, but by the time they do all the other veggies will be black. So if you want conventional roasted potatoes, cook them separately.

And don't forget that when you take the meat out of the oven you need to let it rest for at least ten minutes and preferably twenty before you carve it. So use this extra time if necessary to turn up the heat and give the veggies a little extra boost. Just don't over-do it.

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