So here is the harvest you caught a glimpse of in yesterday’s post.  We turned our harvest into roasted vegetables and sauteed beat greens over couscous.  Scrumptious!

Why Roast?

Root vegetables are very tasty when roasted.  Unlike boiling, roasting leaves much of the nutrients intact, and it brings out the sweetness of each vegetable.  Since we know where our veggies come from - organic soil from our garden - we don’t peel most of them either, so more nutrients are left in the vegetable.

While roasting can take an hour to cook, there is very little prep work involved.  Essentially we cut the vegetables into large pieces (you can see the size in the top photo), toss them in some oil, salt, and pepper, and throw them on a cookie sheet.  Then we can walk away from it for at least 1/2 hour while it does its thing.

What we roasted (pic): 

1 large fennel bulb (my first one!), 11 carrots of various types, 1 golden beet, 1 chioggia beet, 6 brussels sprouts (our first!), 4 scallions, and 1 head of broccoli.

While I am learning to roast, Matt is really our roasting master.  He went to cooking school in LA and has worked in some amazing restaurants.  He’s done this a million times, and it’s totally second nature to him.  So I asked him to give us the inside scoop....

Matt’s Keys to Proper Roasting:

1. 1.Excellent vegetables to start.
   

2. 2.Set the oven at 400.  Don't listen to recipes that give different temperatures for everything.  Set it and forget it.
   

3. 3.Put the vegetables in a large bowl.  Coat in (olive) oil.  Don't be a wimp about it (the extra will just pool at the bottom of the bowl). Toss.
   

4. 4.Salt heavily.  Don't be a wimp about it.  Toss.
   

5. 5.Pepper the vegetables well, but don't over do it.  Toss.
   

6. 6.Place vegetables on baking sheet.  Do not over pack them:  the vegetables should lightly touch, but not pile up on top of each other.
   

7. 7.If roasting a lot of vegetables, put different vegetables on different baking sheets.  If roasting vegetables of very different cooking times (eg, potatoes and broccoli) put them on different baking sheets and stagger the timing. 
   

8. 8.No specific cooking times.  Taste to check for done-ness.
   

9. 9.If you want more browning, switch to broil at the end, and you’ll get some quick color.
   

10. 10.Don't over think it.  These things take care of themselves.
    

So, spoken like a true cook, there are no measurements here.  As far as salting goes, it takes quite a bit - a good-sized hand full.  More than you’d think.  And oil, also pretty liberal.  Don’t be a wimp about it, he says. Can you hear the Italian side of him coming through?

Cook time: A thicker vegetable like beets or potatoes will take up to an hour, while smaller vegetables will take around 30-40 minutes.  So start the thicker vegetables first.

What we sauteed:  the beet greens.  Don’t compost them, eat them!  Beet greens are a tasty leafy green vegetable, very high in iron and beta-carotene.

Matt’s Sauteed Beet Greens:

1. 1.Clean and de-stem (including the stem in the leaves).  This takes time, but it's well worth it. 
   

2. 2.Chop into big pieces.  Italian family style.  Don't over think it. 
   

3. 3.Put some olive oil in a pan.  Add garlic, or preferably shallots.  Add the greens, cook down, salt aggressively, and pepper somewhat. 
   

4. 4.Drain off the liquid, then add a small amount of (white wine) vinegar before taking off heat.  Don't over cook.  Just soften and heat. 
   

5. 5.Taste for acid and salt, adding more if necessary.
   

Did you get that?  I swear, I tried to pin him down on the amounts of salt, pepper, oil, and cooking time.  But he says it’s not a science, don’t over think it, just experiment with it.  Have fun!  Italian family style, for translation purposes, just means cut into large pieces.

Matt’s Couscous:

1. 1.Couscous is 1:1 water and couscous.  We make a cup for two people. 
   

2. 2.Put the couscous in a bowl, add some olive oil, and mix until coated. 
   

3. 3.Boil water (with a lot of salt in it), remove from heat, add couscous, and let sit for 5 min. 
   

4. 4.Fluff with fork.
   

A word on salt.

Matt’s rule of thumb on salting anything that you boil in water is:  salt it until it tastes like the sea.  That works for pasta, oatmeal, couscous... all sorts of things.  Salt is very important to cooking - many cooking class hours are spent on how to salt.  It’s an art that requires quite a bit of trial and error.

If you’re interested in learning more quickly, here’s an exercise Matt did in one of his classes:  Make a basic sauce, like a tomato sauce.  Then literally add a couple of grams of salt at a time, tasting as you go.  Keep adding until you start to notice the change in flavor.  Keep adding until it tastes right.  Keep adding, keep adding.  A tiny bit at a time.  Until it goes over the edge, and you can taste that you’ve over salted.  Once you do this a few times with different dishes, you’ll get a pretty good sense of what salt does, when it’s too little, when it’s too much, and when it’s just right.

We use Diamond Kosher Salt.  Other salt that we’ve tried pales in comparison.  This salt is easy to cook with:  it has a bit of a plateau between just right and too much salt, so it’s a bit forgiving.  Looking for a local source is on my list of things to do, but for now, this is what I’d recommend.