Vegetable Tray Bake & Tahini Yoghurt Sauce
Introduction
School hols coming up so get kids prepping and chopping their dinner! A tray bake of vegetables is easy to do and easy to cook, but they love it because they can choose what goes in it and what they eat from it.
Serves: 4 or more
Ingredients
Baked Vegetables
1 red and 1 yellow pepper, halved, cored, deseeded and cut into chunks
1-2 fennel bulbs
1 kg (2 pound 2 ounces or thereabouts) potatoes, peeled and cut into fat fingers
1 tsp sea salt or to taste
1½ Tbsp olive oil
Small handful of fresh herbs: bay leaves, rosemary leaves, thyme sprigs, sage leaves, and marjoram
Tahini Yoghurt Sauce
1 cup unsweetened yoghurt
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed to a paste with a large pinch of flaky sea salt
2-3 Tbsp tahini paste (hulled or natural ‘unhulled’)
1 Tbsp lemon juice
2 Tbsp chopped mint
Method
1 Prep the vegetables and put them in a large shallow roasting tin lined with baking (parchment) paper. Season with salt, scatter with herbs and drizzle with oil.
2 Bake for about 50-60 minutes, in an oven preheated to 200°C (400°F), turning them once, or until tender and lightly golden.
3 For the sauce, mix everything together, taste, and add a little more lemon juice or salt if it needs a bit more sparkle. Serve with baked vegetables.
Recipe Notes
This sauce makes a healthy alternative to mayo in burgers. It also goes with vegetable fritters, fried crumbed fish, and couscous and burghul dishes and with barbecued vegetables like eggplant. In fact, just about anything!
Vary the vegetables, including more peppers when they are a good price, add carrots, peeled and cut into fat wedges, or cauliflower florets. I like to use agria potatoes, or a mi-season floury type. Avoid vegetables that can go soggy, like mushrooms and tomatoes, and keep the vegetables in one layer; it’s better to make two trays rather than a double layer in one tray.
What to serve with this? Again, anything: A great big bowl of salad and other vegetable dishes like cauliflower cheese; a roast chicken and broccoli or asparagus; stuffed zucchini (courgettes) and a tomato and basil salad; or something off the barbecue like char-grilled eggplant.
