A Kitchen Diary of sorts with rather a lot of chit chat and some exceptionally useful recipes. Photos and artwork by Anna Vaught (me), Giles Turnbull and the generous people at Flickr who make their work available through creative commons. They are thanked individually throughout the blog.

Friday 2 October 2009

A colourful Autumn supper


This made me happy just to look at it.

Potatoes, whole cloves of unpeeled garlic, shallots, sweetheart squash and tomatoes roasted in the oven.

You just cut up your potatoes into sizeable chunks: I didn't even bother to peel mine. Peel your little heart-shaped squash --these sweetheart ones as so pretty, but use any type of squash or the first pumpkins as they arrive-- and chop it into chunks. Leave the garlic in whole cloves, but you need not peel it. Peel the shallots, but leave them whole and chuck in the tomatoes whole. I used some cherry tomatoes I had in the garden.

Now, mix everything up in a big rustic dish or hey -- in a chipped pyrex dish, like the one I had to hand. Add a little sea salt, lots of freshly ground black pepper and a big slosh of olive oil, or sunflower oil. Put this into a hot oven and roast for about forty minutes, turning once.

This is real mood food: lots of consoling starch and you get the cream of the potatoes, the orange of the squash and of the tomatoes (or the reds, if you like) plus purple hues from the garlic cloves and outside edges of the shallots. As cheerful as a real fire.

You could serve this as is. It's good with some chilli sauce drizzled onto it. I favour --and have, since my Trinidadian college room mate put me onto it-- Encona chiili sauce. However, we are also having a simple preparation of eggs in the oven. Just beat four eggs with a cup of milk and some salt and pepper and add some gratings of parmesan. Or whatever cheese you happen to have -- even if it's only a dog end of cheddar that fell down behind the mik.. To this I like to add some finely chopped onion which I have softened in a little oil. You could do all this in the oven while the vegetables are cooking.  Mix your egg preparation together, add some chopped chives, too, if you have them and then bake it for twenty minutes. I do so in a lightly oiled flan dish.

That's all. It's a a really satisfying, robust and el cheapo supper. What do you think?

The picture is good, isn't it? It's from Andyrob at www.flickr.com

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