plain jane cooking - recipes for the novice:

roasting vegetables

Roasting vegetables gives them a wonderful uniqueness of flavour. This is due to the dry heat reacting with the natural sugars of the vegetables. Essentially caramelising them and making them sweeter, it also dehydrates the vegetables to a degree and therefore intensifies the flavours.

Roasting to strip it right back to the basics, is frying in the oven or to look at it another way baking with oil. Often professional chefs will state items like roasted pepper, tomatoes and garlic, when in actual fact they are baked, as no fat or oil is usually involved apart from maybe brushing them with it.

Roasting is most suited to the hardier vegetables, those that grow below the ground, but there are a few exceptions like pumpkin.

Vegetables most suited to roasting include:

• potatoes, sweet potatoes and kumara
• yams
• carrots
• swedes and turnips
• parsnips
• pumpkins
  

oils and fats

What oil or fat to use? This depends on what flavours you want and maybe more importantly these days your cholesterol or weight concerns. So without getting into the health debate, let me list alternatives and you can choose what suits you best.

For flavour

• duck or goose fat
• pork fat
• lard (commercially produced pork fat)
• dripping (commercially produced beef fat)
• ghee (clarified butter)

For health conscious

• olive oil
• any cholesterol free oil

You can of course, just use a little water or stock if you are really health conscious, but again this is more baking than roasting.

method

Personally I always prefer to partially cook the vegetables and potatoes via boiling first, the reasons for this are threefold, firstly it brightens the colour, secondly it speeds the cooking process, so they do not burn and thirdly the pre-boiling seems to react wit the cell structure or natural sugars and gives a far superior taste and texture.

I also prefer to leave most of my vegetables un-peeled and I simply give them a good scrub under running water, by leaving the peel on, they are less likely to break up, it adds flavour and is more nutritious.

cut vegetables into even sized pieces, I prefer to keep to the original shape of the vegetable as possible (for presentation purposes) and it means an even shape. carrots and potatoes for example I cut lengthways in half and then maybe in half again if they are big, so I have nice wedge shapes

• place into cold, salted water (taste the water, you must be able to taste the salt)
• peeled or crushed garlic can be added if preferred
• place onto a medium heat and bring to the boil
• once water has boiled, cook for 3 to 5 minutes only
• drain in a colander and allow to dry, by letting the stem to escape
• heat the oil / fat in a saucepan until shimmering and pour into the roasting tray (it can be heated in the roasting tray if your stove top is big enough)
• very carefully add the vegetables taking care not to splash the hot oil onto yourself
• place in a pre-heated oven (180°C) until cooked and browned to your personal taste (45 minutes to 1 ½ hours depending on how much you pre-cooked them)
• remember to turn them frequently, approx every 10 minutes so they cook and brown evenly

chef notes:

For extra flavour, after pre-cooking them and allowing them to dry, I will
often do one of the following for approximately 1 hour

• marinade in a little olive oil with garlic
• marinade in a little olive oil with grated orange zest (particularly good with pumpkin, carrots and yams)

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