A Quick Rainy Day Roast

I’m always on the lookout for easy recipes that are quick to put together and cook up, while also being nutritious— a perfect workday meal. This recipe was a product of things I found in my fridge and pantry that I realised would work beautifully in a roast.

The idea is extremely simple; all you need in addition to the vegetables is olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary and thyme. I usually make little parcels in sets of three, which I use across three lunches/dinners, so you could prepare this a day in advance even.

This is probably the simplest recipe I’ve posted here, as the only ingredients you need (in addition to the vegetables) are salt, pepper, olive oil, rosemary and thyme. Sometimes a little garlic and balsamic vinegar might be brought into play to enhance the flavour of broccoli or beetroot. You could also substitute butter instead of olive oil (which would work beautifully with the potatoes and corn), which would yield a richer flavour, and a beautiful burnished gold colouring on some of the veggies, but the aim here is to keep it healthy, so I only use olive oil throughout. The exception here is onion, which I usually prepare by half slicing it into six sections (you don’t cut all the way to the root part, so it holds shape) and inserting a sprig of rosemary with some butter into the middle, with a gentle seasoning of salt and pepper, before wrapping it up in foil. Using butter makes a lot more sense as it slowly melts and soaks into the onion, making it super tender and delicious. You could use olive oil instead here too, but the way the rosemary soaks through the layers of the onion wouldn’t be the same.

This isn’t a conventional recipe post, because this is something that you could easily freestyle and experiment with random vegetables, and possibly even fruit. I used baby potatoes, carrots, celery, corn, broccoli, asparagus and onions in the last few roasts I attempted. I’ll add new vegetables to this list as an when I try them out. I use baby potatoes instead of whole potatoes because their smaller size ensures that they’ll be fully cooked in an hour. You could use a whole potato and cut it into smaller pieces, but this might yield a drier texture to the potato. All these vegetables (and treatments) also work beautifully for a vegan/vegetarian barbecue. I usually always have the rosemary onions and corn ready at any barbecue I participate in.

I’ve ordered the following recipes according to their bake times. I usually pre-heat the oven to 200ºC, and start assembly during the pre-heating phase. I usually start with the potatoes, and then the carrots and celery. As soon as the oven is nice and hot, I toss the foil-wrapped potatoes along with the carrots and celery and turn the oven timer to a full hour. Then I go about preparing the remaining components— the corn and onion first, and then the broccoli and asparagus. When the timer hits 35 minutes, I toss in the corn and onion. The final foil parcel with the broccoli and asparagus go in for the last 12 minutes of the roast.

I haven’t listed quantities here, because you can choose to increase and reduce quantities as per your tastes. I use around 100g of potatoes, one small corn cob, a handful of broccoli (which also usually works out to around a 100g), around two carrots, two sticks of celery, two sticks of asparagus and one whole tomato, or a small handful of cherry tomatoes per serving.