Roast vegetables

Tags

butternut, carrots, easy side, onions, parsnips, potatoes, side dish, vegetables

Nadia is recovering from her second carpal tunnel surgery, this time on her right and dominant hand, so I am in charge of making meals for a few weeks. To be entirely honest, she did make and freeze enough meals to last at last 10 days so I do not have too many meals to take care of – luckily.

One of my favourite sides is also one of the easiest to make but, boy, is it tasty. I love my meat and protein but could almost eat just a big portion of these for dinner – I did say “almost”.

Ingredients:

1 small butternut, peeled and seeds removed
2 potatoes, peeled
2 onions, peeled
3 parsnips, peeled
4 carrots, peeled
1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon herbs de Provence

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 200C / 400F
Cut the carrots, parsnips, potatoes, onions and butternut squash into cubes
(All the vegetables will shrink while baking, so don’t cut them too small)
Place all the cut vegetables in a single layer on a large baking sheet
Drizzle them with olive oil, salt, pepper and the herbs
Toss well to coat all
Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until all the vegetables are tender, turning once with a metal spatula about half way through cooking
Season to taste, and serve hot
Enjoy!

Chicken with chorizo, potatoes, chickpeas and lemons

Tags

Chicken, chickpeas, chorizo, lemons, potatoes, spanish, stew

The smell when this simple, one dish meal is cooking, is simply fabulous. It takes about 10 minutes to prepare and then you sit back and enjoy a glass of white wine and wait for the oven to do its job. Make sure to have lots of fresh baguette on hand to mop up all that superb juice at the bottom of the dish.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 lemon, quartered (preferably organic)
6 to 8 pieces thighs and drumsticks
1 tablespoon paprika (sweet)
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 medium potatoes, cut into chunks
200g / 8oz strong chorizo, cut into small chunks
12 cloves of garlic, peeled
400ml / 1 3/4 cup hot chicken stock
2 pinches saffron
1 tin chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained
Parsley, fresh, roughly chopped
1 cup Greek yoghurt

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 200C / 400F
Mix the paprika, the salt and pepper and 1 tablespoon olive oil together and massage into into the chicken pieces
Place the chicken in a roasting dish
In a medium bowl, mix the potatoes with the chorizo and the rest of the olive oil
Scatter around the chicken
Cover with a lid or aluminum foil
Place in the oven for 30 minutes
Remove the lid or foil, stir all, add the lemon quarters, garlic, hot stock, saffron and the chickpeas and return to oven for another 30 minutes or until the chicken is cooked
Sprinkle with parsley
Meanwhile mix the yoghurt with a pinch of paprika and a pinch of saffron and stir well – serve alongside the chicken with lots of crusty baguette
Enjoy!

Black Pepper Hasselback Potatoes

Tags

pepper, peppercorns, poivre de penya, potatoes, side dish

This is a great and tasty side and makes a nice elegant potato dish.  They are easy to make and just take a small amount of preparation.  It is worth it when you see the result.

We made them to serve with a nice oven baked steak and it worked really well.

All prepped and ready to go into the oven:

Serves 2

Ingredients:

2 large potatoes
2½ teaspoons whole black peppercorns
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
Pinch of salt

Preparation:

Heat oven to 200C / 400F
The potato must be sliced into 3mm slices but only 3/4 of the way through.  To help with this process we used a skewer to prevent slicing all the way through
Repeat with all the potatoes
Roughly grind the peppercorns with a pestle and mortar.  We mixed in 3 different kinds of peppercorns (regular black pepper, pink peppercorns and penya peppercorns) to make it interesting.
Melt the butter and oil in a roasting tin
Once sizzling, add the potatoes
Toss well so that all the potatoes get coated in the fat, then season well with salt and three quarters of the freshly ground pepper
Roast on the bottom shelf of the oven for 1 hr-1 hr 15 minutess until golden and tender
Scatter over the remaining pepper to serve
Enjoy!