Sunday, December 1, 2013

It All Started With A Picture of Roasted Vegetables...

I was poking around someone's bloghop the other day and came upon a picture of vegetables.  I am already in the food doldrums of winter with no good fresh vegetables around and it intrigued me.  Clicking led me here.

She talked about roasting vegetables to use as sauce for pasta and I thought it sounded easy and really good.  I have about had it with spaghetti sauce at the moment, and though I like pasta, I am about to need to take a break.

This recipe came just in time.

You need zucchini, tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic, onions, a can of diced tomatoes and a bell pepper.  Try as I might, a bell pepper wasn't to be found at Trader Joes, so I did without.  I think it was fine without it.


The one thing you have to keep in mind is that it will take over an hour to roast the vegetables.  Fine on a weekend or summer day, but not so fine on a school day if I don't get home early enough.

Eating at 9pm isn't really an option for this hungry lady.

So, I fantasized about this for about 4 days.  Each night that I wanted to make it, I either didn't have the ingredients or enough time to get them AND get them roasted in time.

I made a stop at Trader Joes for the vegetables and found 2 excellent sounded raviolis and I thought they would be a fun flavor change from just pasta.

One was basil and one was spinach.  And I had to wait about 3 nights before I could actually eat them because something interfered every night!

After about an hour and 15 minutes of roasting at 350, the vegetables looked ready for pureeing into a sauce.  They smelled so good!! I used a deeper pan than recommended, so that might have influenced cooking time.

I pureed all of the vegetables and added the can of tomatoes.  The original recipe suggested pureeing some of the vegetables and leaving the rest but I wanted them all the same.  I did only a rough chop toward the end so some of the pieces were slightly larger but not as big as they were when they were cooking.

I added a little ground pepper and served it over the raviolis.


And forgot the parmesan.  It would have been even better with parmesan but we survived.  It was lacking a little something and I think that would have made the difference.  I don't think the missing bell pepper was the flavor we were missing.

I thought it was great and I'll make it again.  I can't wait to make it during the summer with fresh zucchini and tomatoes.

K-ster was ok with it.  I think he'd eat it again but it wasn't something that blew him out of his chair.  He's never been one to suggest that I cook a vegetable, so I'm not surprised.

If I told him we were having 3 courses of meat followed by cheese on top of cheese with a dessert of Dairy Queen ice cream on a cheesecake, that might blow him out of his chair.  But roasted vegetables with frou frou ravioli?  Not this week.

Linking here:

http://www.skiptomylou.org
http://www.cherishedhandmadetreasures.com 

1 comment:

  1. I make a similar sauce with fresh tomatoes, carrots, onion or leek, ad zucchini all roasted with maybe some garlic too. Then puréed. And I could drink the stuff. It tastes so unbelievably good. If you grow tomatoes next year it's a great way to use them up. The carrots make it slightly sweet.

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