Someone's In The Kitchen With Dina.

I have just a few minutes before I have to rush off to my first class of the semester but...'Tis recipe time, my friends! As I mentioned in the previous post, I made roast vegetables for my mom's birthday dinner. It is incredibly easy and incredibly tasty and there are about a million variations you can choose from. I'll stick to the easiest one I know: Balsamic Roast Vegetables. There are a number of different vegetables you can roast, but to simplify things I'll only include in this recipe those vegetables that all take the same amount of time to get nice and tender. I'll tell you how many of each thing to use but it's pretty arbitrary. It all depends on how much you want to make and how much you like each kind of vegetable.

(Ignore the whole tomatoes in this photo. They were not used)

You Will Need:
-Medium sized squash (green and yellow), 2-3 of each color
-Cherry tomatoes, it's up to you how many you use. I'm gonna say about 25 cherry tomatoes. You will not be cutting these.
-2 bell peppers, of two different colors (for color and flavor variety)
-5 whole carrots (you can use baby carrots as well, but in my advanced culinary opinion, whole carrots are prettier)
-Small, white whole mushrooms. About 20-25. You will not be cutting these up.
(Sorry for the random numbers. You'll see when you make this that it really depends on how much space you have and how hungry you are. It's nearly impossible to get this recipe wrong/to mess up)
-Large ziploc bags
-Balsamic dressing
-9x13 glass pyrex pan (the more you make, the more pyrex you need. The more the merrier!)
-Large spoon/serving apparatus of some kind

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Wash your vegetables
3. Cut off the ends of the squash. Cut squash in half lengthwise. Cut halves into wedges. Chop into pieces about 1/4-1/2 inch thick (no need to be precise, just don't cut them too thin as they lose a considerable amount of volume in the oven). Set aside.
4. Peel carrots. Cut into thirds. Cut those thirds in half lengthwise. Set aside.
5. Cut off top of bell peppers and remove seeds. Cut into strips about 1/4-1/2 inch thick. Set aside.
6. In a bowl, mix all of your vegetables together. There's going to be a lot so either you will need one large bowl or a few smaller ones. Either way works just fine.
7. Start spooning mixed vegetables into ziploc bags until about 3/4 full. You can use one bag over and over again or a couple, this is up to you.
8. Pour balsamic dressing over the mixed vegetables in the bag. It will be a few tablespoons worth, but the point is to get all the vegetables well coated, so too much is better than too little. This is like marinating meat.
9. Close ziploc and shake the vegetables in the bag to get all of them as evenly coated as possible. This takes all of 30 seconds.
10. Pour mixed and marinated vegetables into your pyrex dishes about 3/4 of the way full.
11. Cook at 400 for 30 minutes or until perfectly tender and juicy! Let cool for a few minutes.
12. Enjoy!

For those of you who don't like balsamic, that is perfectly fine. Basically what the vegetables need is olive oil to coat, and whatever herbs you want. You can keep it basic with salt and pepper, or do like I did for my mom's dinner and add herbs de'provence (or whatever herbs you happen to adore). My personal favorite is roasted beets with rosemary. They take 1.5 hours because they're so dense and fibrous, but the rest is the same. Peel them, slice them into thick wedges (about 6 per beet). The only difference is that you want to put them in tinfoil with the rosemary inside, seal the tinfoil lightly, and then roast in the pyrex. Anyway, my point is that you have free license to experiment and try different tastes. Or try other salad dressings, it's completely up to you. Cleanup is easy, the vegetables are good hot as a side dish or cold in salads, and you can experiment with a lot of different veggies. The only thing you need to keep in mind is that the more dense and fibrous the vegetable, the longer they need to roast. This means putting them in the oven before the others and mixing them after they're all done cooking. For example, we had pearl onions and brussel sprouts in our mixture. But both of these needed to go in about 20 minutes before the rest, and the sprouts needed to boil on the stove for about 5 minutes prior to being marinated. So if you want to keep it easy, stick to veggies that are all about the same. And keep the colors interesting! The colors are the best part!

And voila!

Roast Veggies!

Ours was a little orange for my taste. Had I been the one doing the shopping, I would have picked up a red bell pepper as well as an orange one since we already had carrots. Or perhaps thrown in more tomatoes. Alas, father did the shopping. And I'm pretty sure this picture was taken pre-roast, unfortunately. But you get the idea. If anybody has any questions or if this recipe was unclear, let me know! Bon apetit!

-LG