Roasted vegetables with garlic and lemon

This is a real article I found in the newspaper. I swear - I'm not making this up. "An office worker cleaning a fridge full of rotten food created a smell so noxious that it sent seven co-workers to the hospital. Firefighters had to evacuate the AT&T building in downtown San Jose, Calif., on Tuesday, after the fumes led someone to call 911. A hazmat team was called in. The mixture of old lunches and disinfectant caused 25 people to need treatment for vomiting and nausea. But the enterprising worker who cleaned the fridge wasn't one of them - she can't smell because of allergies." (Associated Press)

Whoa. At our house I was beginning to suspect that the refrigerator and the compost pile had become one and the same. It was not yet time to call 911, but it was definitely time to clean out all the odds and ends of things that tend to get pushed to the back of the shelves and the bottom of the bins. As I cleaned out the unusable, I came upon an orphan white beet, a single little pepper starting to shrivel, two partially used bags of potatoes and some enormous carrots. Not to mention a bowl of water with a lone chunk of tofu, and a lot of very ripe small tomatoes. After all that cleaning I needed something really easy to cook, and decided I might as well roast the stuff I'd found.

Roasting veggies is so easy it doesn't feel much like cooking, but the results are wonderful. I used yellow and red potatoes, a humongous carrot, a white beet, garlic cloves, a small banana pepper and a lot of small red tomatoes. I preheated the oven to 425˚ and cut the potatoes and beet into smallish chunks. The carrot got cut first into 3" sections and then into lengthwise slices. I added some olive oil and turned the veggies to coat them, and I mixed in a handful of chopped parsley. Some unpeeled garlic cloves also went into the earthenware pan with the veggies, and two 1/2" thick slices of tofu were coated with a little tamari and laid on top. The veggies were more or less in a single layer in a large, uncovered dish.

After 30 minutes in the oven, the tomatoes were added to the dish, and it went back into the oven for another 20-30 minutes or so, until the potatoes were cooked. When I took the pan out, I squeezed the garlic cloves out of their peels and mixed it into the veggies, and I broke up the tomatoes a bit to let the steam out. Some fresh ground pepper and it was ready to eat. I rarely add salt to vegetables, especially roasted ones that have so much natural flavor, but everyone has different tastes so add the seasonings you think are needed. You could drizzle on a little balsamic vinegar if desired. I had planned to squeeze lemon over the top but forgot all about it. Next time.

Roasted cauliflower salad

The photo does not do this justice, but this delicious recipe is from our middle son, Aaron. He's a fabulous cook but it's a little hard to pin him down on quantities as he moves very fast and doesn't measure. As I ran after him with a pen and notebook, the conversation went something like this.

me, "How many walnuts did you just put in there?"
Aaron, "I don't know."
me, "Would you say maybe a half cup?"
Aaron, "I don't know."
me, "a whole cup?"
Aaron, "Maybe. I don't know. They made a single layer in the pan."
me, "Well. Let's say a half cup."

And so on. Aaron is the sort of cook who has a mortar and pestle at home so he can grind his own herbs and spices so they will be FRESH. He requests cooking equipment for his birthday. He cooks by instinct, and everything he makes tastes amazing. This excellent dish is no exception. It was delicious and easy to make. Try it. You won't be sorry. I did my best to translate the recipe but I'm sure there's plenty of wiggle room in there for personal creativity.

We used a purple cauliflower because that's what we had from our CSA, but Aaron normally uses a white one. Aaron also made a chick pea salad, and we had bread that I had made earlier from a no-knead dough that I keep in the fridge. (will post some day...)

Roasted cauliflower salad

• one large head of white or purple cauliflower, cut into chunks
• olive oil for coating cauliflower
• about three ounces arugula
• one medium red onion, cut in half and thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup walnut halves, toasted (maybe one cup—personal decision)

Dressing (or use your favorite vinaigrette)

• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/8 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoon dijon mustard
• one tablespoon agavé syrup (or other sweetener)
• two cloves garlic, finely minced
• two tablespoons fresh minced herbs of choice
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Place the cauliflower in a large cast iron (or other) pan. Toss with a tablespoon or two of olive oil to coat. Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste, if desired.
2. Roast in 450˚ oven for 20 minutes. Stir, then roast for 25 minutes more or until the cauliflower has softened and turned brown around the edges. When cauliflower is almost done, add garlic and roast a few minutes more, to remove the raw taste. Or, use raw in the finished salad if you prefer.
3. While cauliflower is roasting, toast the walnuts in a heavy pan until fragrant and toasty.
4. Whisk the dressing ingredients together. (with a fork or whisk)
5. Put arugula, onion, and walnuts into a serving bowl. Add the cauliflower and mix together to wilt the greens slightly. Add the dressing and toss all together.

This dinner served four generously. It tasted REALLY great. Thumbs up for roasted cauliflower.

Oven roasted green beans

I love oven-roasted vegetables, but have always roasted root vegetables and winter squash. The night we ate at my son Aaron's apartment in Seattle, along with a spinach salad and sandwiches, he also served roasted green beans. They looked very weird—all shrivelled and shrunken, but they tasted fabulous. I'm definitely going to make these—as soon as it cools off enough to run the oven! After a string of days so beautiful I hated to leave Wisconsin, we headed to a Seattle heat wave. Now I'm back home and the heat wave has struck here. I think I'll stick to foods not requiring much heat. But if your weather is pleasant or you have air conditioning, try these green beans. It's a simple dish with great taste.

I planted scarlet runner beans this year because I wanted the beautiful flowers to make the garden prettier. Well, they do look great and taste great but they are infested with Japanese beetles. Ugh. The beetles seem to prefer the foliage, which leaves the tender pods for me, but I find the beetles creepy. When I was a child living in Philadelphia, we always had a large population of Japanese beetles every summer. One of our neighbors, who had lots of roses, used to pay the neighborhood kids to pick the beetles off his bushes. He told us his wife made them into "beetle cookies," and while I didn't quite believe him, part of me wasn't sure. He always gave us a certain kind of flat raisin cookie after each picking session that he said were his wife's beetle cookies. I remember years later, as an adult, I came upon these cookies in a store and was shocked to discover they were packaged cookies, not homemade. I think we should be more honest with children, or at least make sure they know when we're joking.

The beans Aaron likes to use for this dish are the long skinny ones.
Oven-roasted green beans
Preheat the oven to 450˚
Toss a pound of long, skinny green beans, washed and with stem end removed, with one to two tablespoons of olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Place the beans in a cast iron skillet and roast in the oven until shrivelled and cooked. This takes about 30 minutes. Halfway through cooking, stir the beans. A few minutes before they are done, stir in a clove of minced garlic. The beans will be crisp-cooked and brown in spots when done.