Roasted Vegetable Salad

I spent some time looking through the fridge this morning and, needing to use up and clear out, decided to make a roasted vegetable salad for our dinner this evening. An aubergine going a bit soft, a big shiny red pepper, a browning-round-the-edges bulb of fennel, half a small butternut squash and some red onions all looked like good contenders to me. Once roasted, and allowed to cool a little, a good handful of mâche (lamb's lettuce) and a scattering of crumbled goat's feta would be the perfect partners. Obviously you can vary the ingredients to accommodate what you have, courgette would be good, sweet potato too.

I cut the vegetables into mouth-sized pieces, the red onion into eighths, and tipped them into a large ovenproof dish. I then drizzled over some olive oil, seasoned with salt and freshly ground pepper, and, using my hands, tossed everything together making sure there was a fine coating of oil over all the vegetables. I also threw in a couple of plump cloves of garlic, in their skins, to be fished out when roasted to flavour the dressing. I popped the vegetables into a fairly hot oven, 190ºC/375ºF, and they took about 40 minutes to be done.

Now, leaving the vegetables to cool down, I started with the dressing. Fishing out the two roasted garlic cloves I slipped the fragrant pulp out of their skins into a small bowl and mashed it up with a pestle, poured over about 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, then added 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, and seasoned to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper. A good whisk was all that was needed to make a lovely emulsion. Balsamic or red wine vinegar would have gone well here too but I'm on a bit of a lemon trip at the moment seeing as I have loads to use up.

So now it was just an assembly job ... I put the cooled roasted vegetables into a large bowl, tossed them together with the mâche, poured over the dressing, mixing everything together well, then crumbled in about 100g of goat's feta. Ummm, heaven on a plate and very healthy too!