Roast Vegetable Salad

Our featured chef this week at I Heart Cooking Clubs is Jamie Oliver, a famous chef, cookbook author and food activist. That said, this is the first time I have made one of his recipes.  I chose roast vegetable salad.  Ten years ago, I learned that roasting or grilling any vegetable was a sure way to cooking success.  So what could go wrong with a roast salad, especially one that features tomatoes, peppers, red onion and garlic?  The dressing itself is a delicious mix of paprika, lemon and capers and will work with any number of vegetable dishes.

The prep is really simple. You don't even have to peel the onions. Sprinkle with a little olive oil and sea salt. (Lucky me, a friend had just sent me a gift of sea salt) You place the tray of veggies in the oven and roast them until they are blackened.

Once the veggies are ready, all that's left to do is add the dressing. As it turns out, I had mixed success. This was not because the recipe is bad; it is really good. It was because I had a surplus of baby bell peppers at home and no regular sized ones. The baby peppers blackened rather too thoroughly as it turns out. Once I scraped away the blackened parts there were only seeds and stems left...well, maybe there was a nibble or two left out of all the peppers. The garlic cloves were also mostly hardened. Obviously, next time I will pay more attention keeping every ingredient a uniform size and add the garlic cloves later.

The other change that I made was not to add any additional olive oil to the dressing. That worked out fine as there was enough oil left over from the roasting. Despite, my faux pas I will be making this again. It was full of bright flavor and a snap to make. 

I found this recipe at jamieoliver.com. It is a very generous site loaded with tempting recipes. I liked his rating system; Super Easy, Not Too Tricky and Showing Off. The roasted salad was rated Not Too Tricky.  Actually, if you pay attention to how you cut the veggies, it is really quite easy.

There are quite a few delicious-looking Jamie Oliver recipes at IHCC. Why don't you check them out?