Roasting is such a great way to prepare vegetables. The high heat brings out the natural sugars, making the veggies delicious without adding a lot of unnecessary fat. You just have the natural goodness of the vegetables. This is sort of a wintry dish; I don't really know what possessed me to turn the oven to 500 degrees when it was 88 outside and husband was grilling steaks, but I did. And with, I think, pretty darn tasty results. This is really easy, the only time consuming bit being all the peeling and chopping, but it's good for a little zen at the end of a stressful day. My day included a lot of sofa-sitting, and was not stressful in the least, but I'm just preparing for the week ahead.
Many Vegetable Roast with Sage and Feta - serves about 4 as a side dish
1 large Yukon Gold potato, or a few redskins, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 head of garlic, cloves separated but left in skins
1 very large sweet potato, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
10-12 leaves sage, shredded
3 medium carrots, peeled and cut into discs
1 red bell pepper, seeded and cut into 1 inch squares
1 red onion, cut into 1 inch chunks
1/2 pound asparagus, cut into 2 inch lengths
1 cup grape or cherry tomatoes
1 block feta, crumbled (8 ounces, I used French sheep's milk feta, but you can use any favorite; goat cheese would also work nicely. Probably even reduced-fat herbed Boursin would work, as well)
salt
pepper
olive oil spray
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the chopped Yukon potato in a bowl and spray with olive oil spray, then sprinkle on salt and pepper. Tip onto a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes, while cutting up the sweet potato and onion. Season the sweet potato and onion in the same method and add to the Yukons, along with the garlic and sage. Cook for 15 minutes. Season the carrots and bell pepper and add to the potatoes, giving everything a good stir. Cook for 40 minutes, stirring once or twice, and then turn the heat up to 500, adding the asparagus and tomatoes; cook for another 10 minutes. Test the doneness of a carrot and potato with a fork. If everything is soft, turn on the broiler. Crumble the feta over and broil for about 3-4 minutes, until the feta is melty and nice. Serve with any roasted meat. Pork would be especially nice, although we had steak tonight. This could easily be a core recipe with the removal of the feta.
The garlic will be nicely roasted along with the veggies and can be squeezed out of its skin and applied to bread, meat, or straight to the mouth.
