melting your mouth

If there’s one person outside my family — which, not to brag, includes numerous excellent cooks — whose cooking I really admire and am inspired by, it would be our good family friend Kelly Branson. She can do everything from comfort food and cookies to fancy party food, always making it look easy and elegant — and everything is always delicious.

When Matt and I got married, Kelly and her daughter Meg, who I’ve been friends with since I was about 8, hosted a Bridesmaids Brunch for me. With the invitations, they enclosed recipe cards for the guests to fill out, so now I have a wonderful box of recipes from my family and friends. Kelly filled out several cards, and one of them was for her baked ziti with these roasted vegetables. Someday I’ll pass along the recipe for the baked ziti, too, which is delicious, but last weekend I just made these roasted vegetables. As Kelly says, “I could eat these roasted veggies all day - spread on crackers, pizza - cold, hot, yummy, yummy, yummy.”

Recipe after the jump….

Kelly’s Roasted Vegetables

2 red and 2 yellow peppers, seeds and pith removed, cut in large chunks
2 sweet onions - quartered or eighthed
1 head of garlic, cloves peeled and crushed
1 package baby bella mushrooms, stemmed
1 eggplant, in 1/2″ slices
2 limes, juiced
1/2 cup + of good olive oil
sea salt

Marinate the vegetables in lime juice, oilve oil, and salt overnight. I usually marinate the vegetables in a gallon sized plastic bag. I add the vegetables to the bag in layers, and shake some sea salt and spread some garlic on top of each layer, then pour the lime juice on top. Usually the vegetables will just barely fit into one bag. You should be pretty generous with the salt, though I have made them too salty. Unfortunately I don’t have a real measurement; after making them a few times I just eyeball it. I then leave the veggies on the counter overnight, turning it over a couple times before I go to bed to redistribute the juice.

Preheat the oven to 375 F and roast the vegetables in a single layer on a cookie sheet for 45 minutes to an hour, until they’re pretty soft but not completely fallen apart. When cool enough to handle, goosh everything together and chop it all up. This makes a bunch, but they’re great in so many ways, I’m sure you won’t mind. Here are some ideas:

• in pasta
• on pizza
• chopped up a little better and served as a spread
• in quiche — I made a delicious one with homemade ricotta (recipe coming!) with the leftovers tonight
• just by themselves, as a side dish or a snack

I’ve had some leftovers from this batch in my fridge for close to a week, and they’re still delicious, so they keep pretty well.

Also from Kelly:

• Butternut Squash Soup

Tags: appetizer, dip, eggplant, mushrooms, peppers, roasted, Vegetable

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 8:59 pm and is filed under Appetizers, Dip/Sauce, Recipes, Side Dish, Snacks, Vegetable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.