Category: Vegetables

Jansson’s Temptation

While we were in the north I had high hopes of being snowed in and had made sure we had the makings of lots of delicious comfort food recipes  to see us through what could be a seige situation.

Of course, while there was snow we didn’t exactly get trapped by it. It showed no sign of melting, though, so I felt entitled to think about something warm and sustaining. Calorific, even. After all, if it did turn nasty, we wanted to be able to fend of hypothermia.

It really was cold, though. Colder than I have known in a long time. We went to the beach nearby and, even though it hadn’t snowed for three, maybe four days, there was still snow on the rocks that are piled up for the sea defences.

Now these rocks are lashed by the sea daily. The waves often crash onto the promenade and you can taste the salt in the air. You’d expect, then, that the snow would have either been washed away or to have melted.

There was even snow on the beach.  Nothing was melting.

Faced with all that, I knew I had to make something to cheer us up, warm us through and fill us with each decadent mouthful.

It had to be Jansson’s Temptation.  I was always told that it was called that because it is so delicious it caused a Swedish clergyman to break his vow not to indulge in earthly pleasures. If you haven’t made it, try it. It will be something you dream about.

It is an oven baked dish of potatoes, onion, cream and Swedish sprats, anchovy style.

Now before you start scuttling backwards, shrieking that you don’t like anchovies, bear with me. They are actually sprats, cured in the Swedish fashion, which means they are a beguiling mix of sweetness and saltiness. The best place to get them? That famous Swedish home furnishings superstore – Ikea.  And the tin to look out for?

Right. First things first. Peel some potatoes and slice them, first one way and then the other until you have matchstick sized pieces of potatoes. I used two potatoes per person because, somehow, this just slides down.

That’s probably a bad thing in terms of diets but a good thing in terms of sheer, unadulterated pleasure.

Parboil them for 3 or 4 minutes, then rinse them in cold water

While that is going on,  peel and slice thinly, a large onion

Butter an oven proof dish

And then put a layer of potatoes

Followed by a layer of onions

Then scatter your sweet and salty sprats

They are so pretty – pink and silver…. quite unlike Mediterranean anchovies.

I pour some of the liquid sweet brine over the potatoes as well

Then cover the lot with some single cream. A large pot should do it.

And then… well, what the heck… just put a few dots of butter on top of it….and then into an oven  at 170 degrees

……….until you have a golden brown,  delicious dish. It takes about 40 minutes or so.

 A bit longer, if you have other things to do. Just cover the top with tinfoil to stop it burning .

Then… heap your plate with what is probably the most delicious potato dish in the world. The sprats have dissolved completely into the cream and give a beautiful sweetly, savoury flavour. Unless you’d been told there were sprats or anchovies in there, you’d never know. This has everything you could wish for – the softness and comfort of potatoes, a creamy, mouth filling texture and that umami type of taste – all sweet, salty and deep.

You would just swoon with the first mouthful.

I serve it with plain roast meat – lamb is good… but the star of the meal really is the potato.

No wonder poor old Jannson succumbed.

Sprouts, chestnuts and bacon

It’s Christmas. That means Brussels Sprouts. 

I went to our local  Farm Shop to get our eggs and there, propped against the door, were piles of sprouts sticks.

This is the best way to buy sprouts as you are certain that they are fresh. A stick like this had 43 sprouts on and cost £1.

Now sprouts can be delicious… or not.

It’s when people boil sprouts into mushy oblivion that the problems start. How can you possibly like a ball of green sludge that when you bite into it, dissolves into hot, watery, slightly smelly goo?

But if you treat a sprout carefully you can have a delicious, nutty-flavoured vegetable. If you combine that with a sweet tasting nut like a chestnut and some salty, crisply fried bacon shards… well then you have a dish that is worthy of having at a celebration.

Cut off the sprouts with a sharp knife and remove the outer layer of leaves so you are left with lovely, shiny green nuggets.

Steam them, or boil them lightly, so they are still firm. This will only take a few minutes, so no wandering off  and leaving them for ages!

Put some oil in a frying pan and, on a gentle heat, slowly fry some good streaky bacon.

If you fry it slowly the fat renders down, leaving you with a wonderfully crispy and tasty piece of bacon, which is perfect for crumbling over the finished dish.

Now chestnuts are the perfect thing to go with sprouts… they are available at the same time as sprouts and they are also much the same shape and size.  Makes sense then to put them together.

If you can get fresh chestnuts you need to roast them and peel them… that’s fine, I always think, if you want to eat them as you peel them. Somehow you don’t mind the burnt fingers and the mess and the bits everywhere when the next thing you do is put them in your mouth.

But when you know you are doing all that and you are only half way through a dish… well, that’s when you give thanks that someone else has already done that for you when you buy then vacuum packed!

I mean, how easy is this? All you have to do is open the packet! I always have a couple of boxes in the larder because I do use them in all sorts of recipes.

And then, the only thing you have to do is put everything together when it suits you.

When I’m ready I toss the sprouts in some hot butter

Add the chestnuts

And then  either crumble or snip into pieces with the kitchen scissors and scatter over the chestnuts and sprouts….

The chestnuts are sweet and nutty and the sprouts seem to take on some of the nuttiness. They are firm and are good to bite into – no mushiness there and no awful, overboiled cabbagey smell either. Just a good and slightly bitter tang to them…..and the bacon adds a lovely salty counterpoint to the sweetness of the nuts.

That would be welcomed on any Christmas table!

Puy lentils and peas

One of the most delicious vegetable  dishes the Bear and I have is made from what might seem to be an unlikely combination of lentils, peas and onion…. it’s quick and easy as well as low calorie. What more could you want?

Puy lentils are a beautiful browny-green colour and they have a lovely nutty flavour

They just need a quick rinse and then put them in a pan with twice the amount of water and bring gently to the boil.

I sometimes add stock granules to the water and that adds another dimension of flavour to the lentils.

While they are gently boiling, finely slice a red onion

and put the slices in a bowl with some olive oil… maybe three or four tablespoons

This starts to soften and mellow the onion.

Then squeeze half a lemon

Pour the lemon juice in and stir round

Add a few handfuls of frozen peas and no, you don’t need to defrost them.  They start to defrost gently and not boiling them keeps them full of flavour. That lemon juice and olive oil dressing seems to emphasise the sweetness of the peas.

By now the lentils will be cooked – they keep their firmness to some degree but they shouldn’t be hard.

Drain them quickly… and then…while they are still hot add them to the bowl

Stir them through the mixed peas and onion, making sure they are all covered with the lemony dressing.

The heat of the lentils softens the onion to perfection and takes the last chill off the peas.

This really is an excellent side dish to serve with roast meat… one of our favourites is roast lamb. The lentils and peas are all you need to serve with a few slices of meat – we don’t even bother with potatoes – which means it makes one of the simplest suppers ever

Broccoli slaw

Those of you who know me, know I adore broccoli.

 Those of you who don’t know me yet will soon learn…

I REALLY love broccoli……. once when  I left a temping assignment, they bought me presents… chocolate and wine, a lovely card…. and a  head of broccoli! OK, so that was a joke but it reflected the fact that there were so many packed lunches of mine that involved broccoli.

I thought I had broccoli cracked… I’d make soup, or steamed with chilli, or Thai green curry, or eat it raw, broccoli puree, broccoli with lemon, broccoli hot.. broccoli cold…. anything really. I love broccoli. I thought I had worked my way through the entire broccoli cookbook.

And then I read The Weekend Carnivore and Sarah Jayne wrote about Broccoli Slaw…. she added apricots, which I would never do,  but even so.. broccoli? Something new to do with broccoli? Oh I was happy!

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I often make coleslaw and we love it but this was different… using the broccoli stem instead of cabbage.

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Simple enough… just slice the broccoli stem into slices across and then across again and again until you have pieces the size of matchsticks.

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… and grate the carrot

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When you make cole slaw, you really have to add onion but I really don’t like lots of it. If I eat big bits of raw onion I get a headache… weird, eh? So what I have done to get round that is to use a microplane grater and grate some raw onion so it comes out rather like a puree….

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and what I do then is add it to some mayonnaise to give the taste of onion without too much harshness.

I love making my own mayonnaise because I can tweak it according to what I intend to eat it with… lemon, perhaps, or chilli. This time I just wanted plain mayonnaise so the clean crisp flavours of the carrots and broccoli could shine through.

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Stir in all that lovely, sweet, grated carrot

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Then add the broccoli and a sprinkling of lovely Maldon Salt and stir it round…..

 

This is gorgeous. Really gorgeous.

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And when fed to Bears? Bears who swear they won’t eat broccoli? Well………. it was eaten. And enjoyed!

To think that some people  throw the stem out….

The vegetable oyster, salsify

While I was getting some vegetables from our local shop, I spotted these long black roots….

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Salsify

I’d been wanting to try it for ages as I had been told it tasted like oysters and that one of its other names was the vegetable oyster.

 I love oysters. One of my favourite places in the world is  Tasmania where we have spent the past two  Christmases and one of my favourite things to do is to sit on the harbour edge, eating freshly caught oysters, bought straight from the boat. I would get a a dozen or so  for lunch and just sit in the sunshine, looking out to sea and eating oysters.

So… if there was a vegetable that tasted like oysters….. maybe I could pretend? OK, so I am probably at the farthest point from the sea it is possible to get in England and this is definitely not summer but I have a vivid imagination……

How on earth could a vegetable taste like an oyster? I thought I had better find out.

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Under that blackened, dusty and hard skin is a white root. You need to peel it clean but as it is rather slender, use a peeler to keep the peelings as thin as possible. You don’t want to waste anything.

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Salsify blackens easily, so I read, so it’s one of thise vegetables you need to cook in acidulated water to keep it white. What that means is that you need to put a lemon in the pan – I always use the already squeezed half of one – there’s enough lemon in that to do that job and it saves using another.

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So, peel it, cube it and pop it all in a pan

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Apparently, the way to do it is to boil it till tender and then saute it…

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Well, here goes…. start melting some butter

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While the butter is melting, drain the salsify…

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Pop it in the pan….preliminary nibble reveals no taste of oysters.

Maybe the sauteing would reveal an oystery taste?

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And the answer to that?

Well, I can only assume that whoever thought they tasted like oysters didn’t eat them very often… or maybe oysters had a different taste back then. Maybe my tastebuds are deficient?

Salsify is nice enough – a bland taste with a hint of something… but that something isn’t oyster. I don’t know what it is, though. Sauteing it in butter helped, though I have to say frying anything in butter probably improves it.

Maybe I had a rogue batch? I don’t know. There seemed to be a lot of work involved for a rather innocuously tasting vegetable that needed two cooking processes to get it to the table.The Bear ate it – after all, he is omnivorous these days – and he agreed with me.

Maybe if we see it in a restaurant we will order it, where perhaps someone else will make a better job of it than me. Maybe one of you has already cooked it and knows a better method?

Well, for the moment, my curiosity is satisfied and I can put out of my mind replicating my Hobart happiness by eating a vegetable. I’d better get saving for the next trip………

Pea and Soya bean houmous with fresh cheese on toast

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I really like the taste of soya beans – there’s a lovely nuttiness to soya and the texture is really good. Not floury at all like so many beans, but clean and firm. I often make a mixed dish of soya beans and peas to serve with a meal as a vegetable side dish. It looks so pretty as well – bright green peas and beans together look beautifully fresh and taste clean and bright.

In the summer I had spotted a recipe in Good Food for Pea and Broad Bean Houmous and thought it looked delicious… but how much more delicious it would be, if the broad beans were replaced with soya beans.

As it is November, the heating systems have come on at work and they are proving difficult to control – it can be almost tropical at times, so a light and cooling lunch (that is ideal in summer time) actually has its place in the grey days of late autumn. You can make this and pack it easily for a lunch to be  taken to work… all you need are the soya beans, some peas

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Some garlic, a lemon, some oil, fresh cheese  (well, I made it at the weekend in the Great Greek Yoghurt Experiment and I still have some left so that will be perfect instead of the goat’s cheese in the original recipe) and some lovely, slow risen No Knead Bread.

Let’s start on the houmous then….. start by boiling the soya beans. They are done first because they are bigger than the peas… so give them a few minutes in a pan

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and then add the peas. Frozen vegetables, like peas and beans are marvellous because you end up with the freshest and tastiest little morsels – far sweeter than you could ever hope to get by buying them in pods.

The peas will only need a minute or two then drain the lot, rinsing them in cold water

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They really do look so lovely

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While they are rinsing and cooling down, pop two or three garlic cloves in the pan you have just emptied and add some oil…. this needs to be on the lowest setting so you can gently cosset those cloves into softness without burning them or making them change colour (though I have to say it isn’t the end of the world if they do change colour…)

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Then, whizz the peas and beans to a sort of roughishly smooth texture

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Once the garlic is soft, add the oil and the garlic to the pea and soya bean puree and whizz it round again – you want it smooth but not so smooth it has no texture at all. You are aiming for a graininess, I suppose.

And squeeze a lemon, after taking off its zest .. add the juice and the zest and stir ….season it well with salt and pepper…. it should taste lovely

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Put it in a bowl and drizzle with more oil… then… make some toast

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Get out your cheese

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Spread lightly

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Then top with your lovely houmous….

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… there you go… light and fresh and so very tasty. Ideal in the tropical temperatures of an overheated office. Even if it is the dog end of November.

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Spiced red cabbage

… glossily red and purpled, subtly spiced and aromatic red cabbage……I love it.noodle prawns, red cabbage, lamb, celeriac 021

It is perfect with fattier meats like pork or lamb as the sharpness of the red wine vinegar that is in there cuts through the richness. Apple sweetens it and the onion gives it savour.

Adding aromatic spices gives it a depth of flavour

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You’ll need nutmeg, cloves and garlic.

First of all, you need to start cutting the cabbage. Cut out the hard core with a sharp knife – it is hard and white and solid… which is not what you want in amongst your lovely bits of shredded red cabbage

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Then slice the rest into thin strips. You’ll also need to slice the onion.

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Rub a bit of butter round an oven proof dish and put half of the cabbage in and add the onion

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Next, peel and chop the apple

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and scatter that on top of the cabbage and onion

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… and then grate a light covering of nutmeg over the top

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Now shake cinnamon over it. I love the smell of cinnamon – it’s perfect at this time of year.

Cloves go wonderfully well with all of this. You can buy ground cloves but it is much better just to grind them yourself and anyway, why would you want to buy an extra bottle of something that will take up space in your cupboard? Put a few cloves into a pestle and grind it. A word of warning though, my brother adores this red cabbage and once rang me up so I could tell him what to do. Well, put on the spot as I was, I rattled off a list of ingredients and, as normal, wasn’t much good at remembering exact quantities. That’s why I show you by taking a picture….anyway, my brother was merrily sprinkling the cloves… sprinkling and sprinkling…….. made it all taste like a dentist’s mouthwash, he said. So, be careful. It will maybe amount to less than a teaspoonsful.

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A light dusting is all you need.. you are building up  layers of  aromatic spices.  Sprinkle some sugar over the top and then.. the secret ingredient. Martini Rosso. Obviously not so secret now………

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I first did it, not with Martini Rosso, but with Dubonnet… I thought the herby red spirit would blend well with the vegetables and the spices. I also had a bottle that I hadn’t drunk and I thought I could start to use it up. Once the Dubonnet had gone I moved on to Martini… and that, I think is even better. Pour some over

 

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then pour some red wine vinegar in as well. This sharpens everything up and keeps the colour a deep purply red.

Put some little knobs of butter over the top and sprinkle more sugar

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Then put the rest of the red cabbage over the top

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Cover it with foil and put it in the middle of the oven at about 160 degrees C. This is going to take maybe two hours or so, so if you are going to cook something else, that’s fine. If the oven needs to be on higher, just move it down to the bottom of the oven and make sure the foil top is on so it doesn’t burn or all the moisture evaporate

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After about an hour or so, look at it… give it a stir. It looks pretty awful till you stir it and see the gorgeous deep colour underneathRack of lamb, finished celeriac and red cabbage 005

What I should have done, of course, was to take it out of the oven dish and make it look attractive. But I didn’t.

 

Tasted great though… you’ll just have to trust me that it looks better than that!

Celeriac gratin

Celeriac always reminds me of weirdly tentacled aliens from Dr Who. I’m sure there was an alien looking much like this on there once

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Anyway, it is a tasty old vegetable and makes a good change from potato all the time. It does smell of celery but the taste is more subtle. I mash it sometimes but tonight I am making a quick gratin.

First of all peel it. I’m usually very strict about using a peeler to take off the bare minimum of skin because that is where so many of the nutrients lie but in the case of gnarly skinned celeriac, well, I am prepared to make an exception.

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I take a knife and just slice at it. One thing to know about celeriac is that it needs to be cooked, if you are boiling it,  in acidulated water (that is, water that has lemon juice in or, as I tend to do, the squeezed out half of a lemon… moneysaving, eh?) otherwise it starts to blacken. If you are making it into a gratin then just work quickly and expect to see it browning if you aren’t moving fast enough. Get it peeled and slice it….

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Anyway, lightly butter a baking dish and place the slices of celeriac in – half of them at first

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I like to add a thinly sliced onion. It adds to the flavour, I think

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Scatter some salt and a knob of butter, cut into cubes over the slices then add another layer of slices on top

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More onion and then pour some milk over it all – not much, you don’t want to cover the celeriac, just enough to cook it

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I would have used cream but I didn’t have any and that was skimmed milk so I added some Greek yoghurt to give it some richness

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(I make it with EasiYo which is, as the name suggests, an easy way to make yoghurt. I always make the Greek yoghurt with acidopholous in and use it in smoothies and as toppings)

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A quick shake of white pepper and it is ready for the oven. Cover it with tin foil to keep the moisture in on the first half of the cooking process – that will concentrate the flavour

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After half an hour take a look – you will see the celeriac has started to soften. Give it a jab with a knife and you will feel the difference

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and after another hour or so? Looking good. It would have been a lot smoother with cream but as we all know, needs must when the devil drives and the important factor is what does it taste like?

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It tasted delicious. And with a lovely bit of rack of lamb? Well, all I can say is that there was nothing left over.

Ohhhhh… aubergine

Sometimes it is really rather lovely to have a lighter, vegetarian meal…. something quick and tasty. I always used to think aubergines were awful until I made this roasted and stuffed-with-delicious-little-bits aubergine. This is excellent when you want a midweek supper when you are late in from work, or maybe  a hot lunch at weekends. 40 minutes or so… does that sound good? And 30 minutes of that is in the oven.. you can be pouring yourself a drink and trying to put the tortures of a working day out of your mind while the smell of supper filters out and makes your mouth water…

Imagine a roasted aubergine, stuffed with delicious bits of anti pasti – olives, sundried tomatoes, artichokes, olives and goats cheese? And before you think that might not be for you, the Bear ate it and said it was delicious.

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You’ll need aubergine (half for each person)

I called in at Sainsbury’s and filled a little pot with their mixed antipasti – it has olives, marinated mushrooms, roasted peppers, tomatoes.

I bought a jar of chargrilled artichokes because I love them and I knew there were some sun dried tomatoes in the cupboard.  You don’t have to, you can just use the mixed antipasti if you want to. All I needed to finish it off was a small log of goats cheese.

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Halve your aubergines and slash them across (try not to slash their skin – you want to keep all the juices in) and then slash again length ways. This will give you the gaps you need to stuff in everything.

Put the oven on at 160 degrees C, or thereabouts

If you have bought artichokes you will need to slice them – they are too big to be shoved in the slashes

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and half the olives and any of the big bits

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Start to jam things in the gaps… this is quick and easy. You are not looking for awards for neatness here

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There will be some oil left from the pot, don’t waste it, dribble it over the vegetables and aubergine

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Then open the goats cheese and slice it. This is a sticky job, more sticky than shoving in the oily vegetables, but don’t worry you can wash your hands in a minute and settle down while it cooks.

Share out the goats cheese on top of the aubergine and vegetables

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See? Looking rather attractive, don’t you think?

Lay them on a silicone sheet or some tin foil, lay some more foil lightly over the top to keep the moisture in for the moment and pop them in the oven.

At this point I would start to boil some baby salad potatoes to go with it and then take a break…. pour that drink and tell everyone within earshot about how dreadful your day was.

After quarter of an hour, check the aubergines… and take off the foil top to brown everything in the last ten minutes. The aubergine will be soft and bathed in the delicious vegetably, oily juices.

Drain the potatoes… and serve….

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There you have it. Forty minutes or so and you have a delicious supper with ingredients you can pick up in the supermarket on your way home, very quickly

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Bonfire Night

Yesterday was  Guy Fawkes, or Bonfire Night and, for us in the UK, we gather round bonfires, watching fireworks and eating sausages, commemorating the failed attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament and the resulting punishment given to Guy himself. It’s also a special day for us as it is our wedding anniversary. And yes, we’ve heard all the jokes about there being fireworks on our wedding night 😉

From our dining table we can look down onto the city below us and see all the fireworks – a fantastic sight and, as a plus point,  it also saves us standing around outside. We don’t like to ignore tradition completely though, so we thought that we would at least have the sausages as part of our anniversary meal. Sausages and our favourite sparkling wine – the one we had at our wedding. Because it was cold we thought that red wine would be better than champagne – more warming, even though it was chilled. I’m sure you know what I mean. We’d wanted sparkling drinks to go with the fireworks going on outside and  chose Hardy’s Crest Sparkling Shiraz

I had to do more, though, than cook sausages and serve some wine and I decided that one of my favourite wintery standby recipes would be perfect – roasted, spiced winter vegetables. I have a recipe that I must have copied down from somewhere – it is written in a very old diary from 1977… not that I first did it then, just that I used the diary…it was already old when I found it….Old and empty, which is why I decided to use it for scribbling down recipes.

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Goodness knows when I wrote that, though, but it must have been at least 17 years ago.

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I have no idea where I got it from, so I can’t give due credit. Anyway, it has evolved, almost beyond recognition since then and I think the tweaks I made have improved it. Well, it has improved it to MY taste, anyway. Still, in order to make it  I needed vegetables, so set off to the greengrocer to see what I could get.

It’s great to be able to go to a traditional greengrocer

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All the fruit and vegetables are piled up so you can see what you are buying and choose just what you want

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I came back with lovely, knobbly Anya potatoes, sweet baby Chantenay carrots, sweet onions, broccoli, baby tomatoes, a sweet potato, a couple of parsnips, some baby corn, some garlic and some ginger. I also bought a packet of Merchant Gourmet roasted chestnuts, which must be one of the best things ever – the time that saves in roasting and peeling, well, I wouldn’t be so keen on chestnuts if I had to do it all myself… and as for the sausages? I chose Toulouse sausages – they are  small French sausages made of coarsely diced pork and bacon flavored with wine, garlic and unlike other sausages tend to have more meat and less of the normal breadcrumb filler.

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The aim is to have the perfect mix of roasted vegetables. I love the soft sweetness of the sweet potato, with a bursting little tomato, a tasty, slightly charred bite of broccoli with the gorgeous chestnut…. lovely little garlicy roasted potatoes and mushrooms…. it really is delicious. It can easily stand alone as a vegetarian meal but with the addition of sausages…..oh it is just perfect!

And best of all it is simple! Start by putting the oven on high – about 230 degrees (210 if it is a fan oven) so that when the vegetables are ready they go into a hot oven and get just a hint of charring. It really deepens the flavour.

Then, prepare your vegetables. Start with the root vegetables –  peel and roughly cube the sweet potato. Chop the Anya potatoes (or any other potato) into roughly the same size pieces. Same for the parsnip. The onion needs to be cut into manageable pieces.  Obviously they are going to take longer than the other vegetables.

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Scatter them into a large roasting tin and drizzle oil over them to give them a good, but light and even coating

Then prepare your spice mix. You need ground coriander, ground cinnamon and some cardomom pods.

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Crush the cardamom pods and take out the seeds inside (I hate it when you leave the pods in and then you chew on the inedible outer casing…it’s a sort of medicinal taste. Not good when you are aiming for a comforting supper) Give them a grinding in the  mortar with your pestle

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The cases split open and inside are the aromatic black seeds.

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You need to separate them from the husks.. either through your fingers

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Or in a large draining spoon so the seeds fall down.

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Then crush the seeds to a powder. You’ll need a teaspoon or so

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Scatter the spices and ground seeds lightly over the vegetables (maybe a large teaspoon of each) and add some grated ginger and chopped garlic. Sprinkle some salt over the top and drizzle with some more oil.

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Into the hot oven for ten minutes or so till you can see it starting to brown….

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Turn the oven down to about 175  degrees (less if it is a fan oven) and before you cover with foil, scatter in the softer vegetables, the baby tomatoes, broccoli florets, quartered mushrooms, the baby corn,  and the packet of chestnuts.

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That will take another hour or so. Just check how things go as it steams in its own juices under its tin foil cover.

Now, I suppose, you had better set the table

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Once I did that, we really entered into the spirit of Bonfire Night… Fireworks? Hah! We had a sparkler each. No expense spared for our anniversary dinner……..

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Back to the cooking. Is everything softening well?

Take the foil off and stir things round….. dot the top with small nuggets of butter and then let it cook, uncovered for the last half hour or so.

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That is, I can assure you, the most lovely aromatic mix of roast vegetables you’ll have had in a long time.

The only other thing to do is cook the sausages

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Make sure they are beautifully browned

Pour some wine… the bubbles are just so right for Bonfire Night. A glass or two of lovely rich sparkling shiraz is just the thing for sausages and veg…. and just the thing to celebrate with!

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And… serve!

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 The roasted vegetables are beautifully soft with just the right hint of charring. The spices are perfect and smell is just gorgeous. Look at how beautiful it all looks.

But Bonfire Night isn’t Bonfire Night without some fireworks… and we needed to celebrate…..

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And the result?

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Clean plates. Always a marker of how successful a meal has been.

And I did, in the end, manage to get a photograph of  the fireworks going off below us

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So… a simple meal of roasted vegetables and sausages – perfect for Bonfire Night and even more perfect to celebrate an anniversary…

Cheers everyone!