If you grow your own produce then maybe you can relate to this time of bountiful year on the allotment. The vegetables are literally elbowing each other with they’re knobbly roots to fight for the glorious prospect of supplying our busy kitchen. Beetroot, sugar snaps, runner beans, courgettes, potatoes and tomatoes seem to have smuggled the odd protein shake or steroid supplement and are bursting to be eaten…we can’t do it quick enough. So tonight, I went vegetarian again. A roasted salad.
I recently found these little balsamic gems in Waitrose and just had to try them! They’re like dinky diminutive drops of balsamic caviar which burst in your mouth with ever bite! Topped over this beetroot salad……..amazing!
- 4 raw beetroot washed and chopped into chunks
- 7 small carrots, whole
- 1 tbsp cumin seeds
- 2 whole garlic cloves
- Small bunch of thyme, leaves picked
- Olive oil
- Salt and pepper
- 150g goats cheese, crumbled
- 2 tbsp mixed seeds, pumpkin, sunflower
- Small bunch of chopped mint leaves
- Balsamic vinegar
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Balsamic caviar (optional)
- Preheat the oven to 190°C. Mix the beetroot and whole carrots in a roasting tin and coat in the cumin seeds, thyme leaves, plenty of olive oil and seasoning. Add the whole garlic cloves.
- Roast, turning every so often for 45-50 minutes until the veg are soft and caramelised at the edges.
- Meanwhile, toast the seeds in a dry frying pan until they are fragrant and begin to pop. Chop the mint leaves.
- When the vegetables are ready, remove from the oven. Take the garlic cloves and squeeze the soft, sweet pulp into a pestle and mortar. Add a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar, a good glug of extra virgin olive oil and some seasoning and bash until blended into a paste. Coat the warm vegetables in this dressing.
- Crumble over the goats cheese, seeds and mint leaves and serve, scattered with a few teaspoons of balsamic caviar if you like!
