This week was a week of removing old veggies from my shelves.  I had acquired many root vegetables, and my neighbor grows rosemary in his front yard, so I thought I’d do the New England traditional roasted vegetables.  This involves many root vegetables, that I had acquired quite a period of time, put into a large pan and then merely set the oven until cooked.

I suppose I could have roasted them on an open fire, and in fact I have been meaning to test my fireplace out, but for now I just cheated and used the conventional oven.

The tubers were:

  • Half a butternut squash
  • A few potatoes
  • A turnip
  • A parsnip
  • A rutabaga
  • A sweet potato (aka yam)
  • A couple carrots
  • Elephant garlic (three elephants for a dollar!)
  • And seasoned with olive oil, salt, and rosemary

I simply chopped everything up into bite sizes, and dumped them into a cast iron pan.  Stirred them up with olive oil, salt, and rosemary.  Threw them in the oven at 375, and took them out about once every 20-30 minutes to stir them and verify their done-ness.  Unfortunately, I had washed them right before using them, so somehow a layer of water got in there.  I was hoping it would steam out fast enough, but clearly it’s too humid around here and it stayed for most of the cooking.  Fortunately, I did manage to bake them to be tasty and not to soggy as feared.

After chopping up all the tubers, I found myself with a considerable amount that would not fit in the skillet.  I had an idea–I made a butternut curry once before, how would various other tubers work for a curry base?  Or for that matter, a mix?  I took the tubers that didn’t fit and boiled them until soft.  Then I set about my usual curry recipe but with throwing in the tubers and mashing them into a sauce.  The rutabagas did not mash so well, so I let them go into the curry as chunks, but mashed the rest.

Instead of a list of ingredients, I offer you a picture:

curry_ingredients

That’s cilantro and spinach in back in bowls, anaheims and thai peppers on the left of the plate, string beans on the back of the plate, a daikon, carrot and zucchini, ginger and garlic, and tofu on the left.  The onion was not actually used.  Actually, I don’t think the carrot was either.  I sauteed peppers, ginger (I generally chop the ginger, then crush the choppings), and garlic, and then added the tuber mush, then the tofu.  Let the melt together for a while and then chop and add the remaining veggies (daikon, zucchini, string beans, spinach).  Add the cilantro in last and don’t really cook it; just stir it in.

It was tasty!  It was declared this was one of my best curries yet.  I wasn’t as pleased with it as the eaters were, but they certain made happy noises.  The roasted tubers also got a lot of happy noises, although I would say this was not my best roasted tubers day.  Also, I only used rosemary–if I were more together I’d use oregano and sage and I’m not sure what else.