By Melanie Albert, Founder & CEO Experience Nutrition, Intuitive Cooking Expert, and Award-Winning Cookbook Author
With a plant-based way of eating we do eat a lot of vegetables. With this in mind, it’s important to know several different simple culinary skills to prepare vegetables, such as roasting, steaming, sautéing, and raw.
In the cooler Fall and Winter seasons one of my favorite ways to cook veggies is roasting. With roasting we cook the veggies in the oven to brown the outside of the veggies, while keeping the center of the veggies a little soft. We can roast all kinds of veggies which gives us a nice variety of tastes, textures, and colors.
Today’s roasted veggies were created by intuitively choosing veggies that I was visually attracted to and feature local Arizona farmers organic veggies purchased at one of our Phoenix area farmers’ markets, Uptown Market.
At the market I was very excited to buy the first Jerusalem Artichokes (also known as Sunchokes) of the season as they are one of my favorite roots. Sunchokes, a relative of sunflowers, have a sweet rich earthy taste.
Sunchokes
Let’s take a look at the local Arizona Farmers’ Winter Veggies from the Uptown Farmers Market.
Winter Arizona Veggies Uptown Phoenix Farmers Market
Farm-to-Table Winter Roasted Veggies Recipe
SIMPLE INGREDIENTS
Mise en Place: Roasted Arizona Winter Veggies
- 2-3 Ruby Radishes (Bene Vivendo)
- 1 Golden Beet (Blue Sky Organic Farms, Litchfield)
- 3 Orange and Yellow Carrots (Blue Sky Organic Farms)
- 1 Leek (Blue Sky Organic Farms)
- 2 Green Onions (Blue Sky Organic Farms)
- 1 Sweet Potato (Crooked Sky Farm, previously purchased at the Downtown Phoenix Market)
- 3 Jerusalem Artichokes (Sunchokes) (McClendon Select)
- 3 Garlic Cloves (McClendon Select)
- 2-3 TBSP organic extra virgin olive oil (Pane Bianco, Chef Chris Bianco, Phoenix)
- Pinch sea salt
SIMPLE STEPS
- Pre-heat oven to 400-425 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Chop all veggies into equal-sized pieces.
Winter Arizona Veggies all Chopped for Roasting
- Coat veggies with olive oil and seasonings.
- Place flat side down on parchment-paper lined flat sheet pan.
Veggies carefully place on parchment-paper lined sheet pan.
More veggies mindfully placed on pan, including the sunchokes.
- Cook for 15 minutes.
- Flip.
- Cook another 15 minutes.
- Enjoy as a side dish with a whole grain or as toppings for flatbread.
Winter Veggie Sprouted Spelt Flatbread
Enjoy Winter Roasted Veggies on Flatbread
TOP 5 TIPS TO ROAST VEGGIES PERFECTLY EVERY TIME
- Coat the chopped veggies thoroughly with oil.
- When placing on unbleached parchment paper, be sure the veggies do not touch each other.
- When placing veggies on parchment paper, place flat side down, so that side of the veggie can brown.
- Flip veggies about half-way through the cooking process.
- Pay attention to veggies while they are cooking, as they cook at different speeds. More dense veggies (like carrots, beets, and sweet potatoes) take longer to cook than water-rich veggies, like onions and zucchini.
Purchase Melanie Albert’s award-winning cookbook, “A New View of Healthy Eating: Simple Intuitive Cooking with Real Whole Foods”
COOKING CLASSES AT THE FARM AT SOUTH MOUNTAIN IN PHOENIX, ARIZONA
Thanks to Natural Awakenings AZ magazine for featuring my Plant-Based Chocolate Pie on the cover and Plant-Based Dessert recipes in the January 2019 issue.
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