Saturday, February 11, 2012

winter wonderful-ness


During the warm months, we enjoy something we call “on top of’. This dish is built with a green salad dressed in home made vinaigrette, perhaps some olives or red onion and tomato, whatever looks good from the garden, and a cooked protein, served on top of the salad. Sometimes shrimp, sometimes grilled chicken, sometimes a bison burger.

I constructed a winter version of this recently, using a variety of vegetables I had in the fridge.
I cleaned and cut parsnips and carrots into two inch lengths, cut a few Brussels sprouts in half, threw in a few smallish pieces of garden broccoli and a handful of grape tomatoes. All this was tossed in olive oil and put in a shallow pan in one layer. I pricked a hot Italian sausage and laid this in the pan on the veg and cooked it all at 400 til the sausage was done and the veg were still firm, but no longer crunchy.

After I sprinkled the cooked veg with some kosher salt, I served this with whole wheat couscous under the veg, with the sausage on top. It was a colorful land delicious winter dinner.

Take a look in your veg drawer and see what needs to be used . You’ll be happily surprised at how easy it is to make a really good meal. And if you prefer to forgo the meat, the roasted veg and the couscous stand well on their own.