Friday, January 15, 2016

Roasted Vegetable Salad

I love vegetables of all different colors. Something that works well for me being a vegan. Aiming at adding more raw plant based food to my diet, I was keen on trying roasting my veges first. My childhood memory is of eating roasted sweet potatoes cooked in a man-made sigree in our garden. Roasted sweet potato chaat was heavenly in winters. :)

Its lovely how roasting vegetables brings out their natural sweetness. Entire house smells aromatic without any spices or herbs being used. Moreover the nutritive value of some vegetables is higher when they are cooked by roasting. Here is my Colorful Roasted Vegetable Salad :)




Few things to note while roasting vegetables in a convection oven are -

1. Coat them with a generous amount of olive oil before roasting. With less oil on them veges can dehydrate while roasting.
2. Different vegetables take different amount of time to get cooked while roasting. I've mentioned timings for different vegetables below.
3. Dice the vegetables into equal sized pieces for uniform roasting.
4. Well roasted veges become tender inside and slightly brown on the outside.

Oven Pre Heated to 220C
Vegetable         Time(minutes)

Potato/Sweet Potato 20-25
ButterNut Squash      20
Carrots         15-20
Onion / Tomato 10-15
Red/Yellow Bell Peppers 10-15
Broccoli                 10


The roasting time can vary based on the size of vegetable pieces and also depending on the oven. Use the above chart as a reference and check your veges 5 Minutes before mentioned time. I put the vegetables in one single stretch on the same tray after gaps of 5-10 minutes as required. This is an overall quick method but adds an additional 5-10 minutes to your cooking because of opening of oven multiple times.

Ingredients

1/2 cup diced potato
1/2 cup diced sweet potato
1/2 cup diced butternut squash
1 cup broccoli florets
1 cup chopped red & yellow pepper
1 small Onion chopped in chunks
1 medium Tomato chopped
1 medium carrot cut in length
2 cloves of garlic roughly chopped
1 tablespoon sunflower seeds
1/2 cup olive oil
salt to taste
pepper to taste
Lemon Juice
1 Tbs Tahini (optional)
Salad Dressing (optional)

Steps

1. Preheat your oven to 200C.
2. Dice and cut your vegetables as mentioned.
3. Grease your baking tray with few drops of oil.
4. Rub the vegetable with generous amount of olive oil. They should look shiny.
5. Spread the veges flat on a tray and sprinkle them with salt and pepper.
6. Start with Potato and sweet Potatoes in a preheated oven, after five minutes add Butternut squash and carrots. After ten minutes add Onion, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli and garlic. Each time you open the oven turn around the existing vegetables a bit for uniform roasting.
7. Whisk together your salad dressing with 2 Tablespoons Olive oil, 1 Tbs Tahini, juice of a lemon and anything else you may want to spike your salad with.
8. Coat your veges with the dressing, sprinkle with sunflower seeds and serve warm :).


Note:- Add fresh herbs / baby spinach to make this salad more crunchy and RAWwww :)




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