.Roast Vegetable Salad.

Oh dear, this blog is feeling very quiet at the moment.  As always, the reason is because I'm madly sewing behind the scenes trying to finish up a few new patterns to release at AQM in a few weeks.  I'm almost there and looking forward to chilling out soon!

For now, let's check out one of our most favourite dinners at the moment - Warm Roast Vegetable Salad!

No meat involved (although sometimes we will have it as a side with something meaty), very filling, good for you and yummy to the max!

I'm not sure that you need an actual recipe to follow for this, but here's a general "how we do it" just incase...

First of all, pull out every single vegetable you can find in your fridge/pantry - pretty much any vegetable you would eat warm works well.  We usually have potato, pumpkin, carrot, red and green capsicum, mushrooms, cauliflower, broccoli, asparagus, onion, garlic...the more you can find, the more interesting and tasty your salad will be.

I always steam  my vegies (in my Thermomix varoma) first to make roasting in the oven quicker.  I'll start with the harder vegies - potato, carrot, pumpkin - and when they are starting to soften a bit I"ll throw in everything else for 10 minutes.  I like to steam my vegies until they are soft to touch, but still nice and firm - it doesn't really matter though as you finish off cooking them in the oven. 

Throw your vegies into a tray lined with baking paper and drizzle with a little olive oil and season with some salt and pepper.  (Don't steam mushrooms, just throw them in the pan now). 

Roast in a hot oven (around 220) turning once or twice until everything is nicely browned and cooked to your liking. 

There are a couple of extras that we always throw in to make your salad taste amazing...first - a punnet of cherry tomatoes.  Pop them into the oven with the rest of the vegies for the last 10 minutes of cooking time.  They just need to be in there long enough to get hot and start to soften a little.

And take a small handful of pine nuts and pumpkin seeds and toast them in a separate tray in the oven for a couple of minutes until they are golden and crunchy.

All that is left to do is pile everything on top of a bed of baby spinach and season with a squeeze of lemon juice and a little more salt and pepper and enjoy!

You can also throw in a can of chick peas and crumble some feta cheese through the salad for an extra treat.  A seriously delicious meal and the perfect last minute dish to prepare when you can't be bothered cooking up a storm but want more than baked beans or cheese on toast for dinner!