Food Lust People Love: Roasted Spring Vegetables

A good roasting in a hot oven brings out the best in most vegetables. Theoretically a side dish, I love a plate of these for a vegetarian main course. When you add a garlicky dressing, your roasted spring vegetables can be elevated to center stage.

This week my Sunday Supper group is sharing easy spring recipes. Which puts me in mind of baby vegetables and spring lamb. Fortunately a nearby supermarket that always has a stock of baby veg so I picked up a selection. I ended up not using them all because my pan was full and if you want caramelized roasted spring vegetables, it is key not to crowd them in the pan.

If the baking pan is too full and there’s not room for air to move between the vegetables, they’ll just steam together and will not roast. Left behind were tiny bulbs of fennel and baby corn. Now I need to think of another recipe to make with those!

Ingredients
For the roasted vegetables:

7 oz or 200g each assorted baby vegetables
(I used small pickling onions, baby leeks, new carrots, baby zucchini and patty pan squash.)
1/4 cup or 60ml extra virgin olive oil

For the dressing:
Leftover oil from the vegetables

2 cloves garlic

2 tablespoons cloudy apple cider vinegar or your favorite good quality vinegar
1 teaspoon honey

Fine sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Method
Preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C. I have a convection fan that I like to use for roasting as it circulates the heat more evenly. If you don’t, you can turn the oven up a few degrees to compensate.

Trim the vegetables of stems and scrub them clean. Since they are tiny, leave them whole. Pile them in a large mixing bowl.

Drizzle the olive oil over them and toss to coat. Sprinkle on some fine sea salt and give the veggies a couple of good grinds of black pepper. Toss to disperse the salt and pepper. You can use salad spoons but clean hands work the best. Plus, you are going to use your hands in the next step so might as well get them dirty.

One by one, transfer the vegetables to a large baking pan, spacing them evenly.

Put the vegetables in the oven to roast for 30-35 minutes or until they are golden and possibly a little charred in places.

There will be seasoned oil left in the bowl. We are going to use it for the dressing.

Grate or mince the garlic cloves into the oil.

Add in the vinegar and honey and whisk to combine. Add another good pinch of salt and more freshly ground black pepper. Set aside.

When the roasted spring vegetables are ready, remove them from the oven and scrape them and any sticky bits from the pan into the bowl with the dressing while they are still hot.

Toss or stir to coat the vegetables with the dressing. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Enjoy!

As I mentioned, this week our Sunday Supper tastemakers are sharing easy spring recipes. Check out this fabulous link list. Many thanks to our host, Anne of Simple and Savory and our event manager, Cricket of Cricket’s Confection.