On this scorching Thursday, I don’t know about you but I don’t really want to stand in the heat of the kitchen. With this recipe you just chop up your veggies and stick them in your roasting tin and off you go! The only bit of stove work is cooking pasta or you could serve this with couscous. The beauty of this is once you have the basic vegetables chopped up you can mix and match to finish with something you fancy.
You could use this as a base for ratatouille (just omit the harissa and cheese on top, and use thyme or other herbs instead of basil) and serve with bread, you could add in preserved lemons and some ras al hanout spices and serve with couscous you can choose to add the tinned tomatoes or not and just serve the roasted veg with couscous and halloumi. Chuck in some olives, red wine with the tinned toms the choice is yours!
I decided to go down the route I did because of what was hanging around my fridge and needed using up. You could use any mix of veg to roast – fennel, butternut squash, sweet potato… whatever you feel like. The only thing you’ll need to consider is cooking time – if you’re using potatoes or carrots you may need to give these 5 minutes in the tin first before adding the rest of your veg.
Method
Serves 4 (we had it for lunch the next day microwaved)
Cooking time: about an hour
- 2 x Aubergine
- 1 x Pepper any colour – I used yellow because I wanted a mix of colours
- 2 x Courgette
- 200g pack of baby tomatoes
- 1 x onion
- 1 x quartered bits of old lemon
- 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
- 2 x tablespoon normal olive oil
- 1 x tablespoon balsamic vinegar
- Big spoon to taste of harissa paste
- 1 x Garlic clove (it was all I had left 😦 ordinarily I’d put up to 4 in)
- Salt and Pepper
- 1 ball of mozarella (if you like it cheesy feel free to add more)
- Handful of Parmesan
- 2 x 400g tin of tomatoes
- Fresh Basil
- 1 tablespoon of tomato puree
- 400g spelt pasta (100g per person)
- Pre-heat your oven to 180 – 200 celcius (fan oven) chop up your veg of choice and put in a suitably sized roasting tin, quarter your lemons and push around the veg. In a small bowl mix together both olive oils, balsamic vinegar and harissa paste. Pour over your veg and mix up so it covers everything evenly. If it doesn’t add a bit more oil and balsamic. Season well.
- Put in the oven for 30-45 minutes check how its doing and stir every so often so everything is cooked equally. Whilst the vegetables are roasting cook your pasta – you can use gluten free, normal whatever you like here. I used spelt because I wanted something with bite and more flavour.
- When its cooked, remove from the oven and add your tinned tomatoes, tomato puree and fresh basil. Stir to combine pushing your spoon along the bottom to deglaze/get up all the delicious burnt bits. Pour in your cooked and drained pasta – stir to make sure the sauce covers the pasta. Add some more salt and pepper – taste to check you’re not over seasoning. Tear over the mozarella and grated parmesan.
- Put back in the oven for another 15 – 20 minutes until the cheese is melted, golden and bubbling
palmernoms 