Roasted vegetables with garlic sauce recipe

This very slow roasted mix of red onion, sweet potato and courgette has a surprise addition of white cabbage – not normally an ingredient you think of to roast, but it works well in a wintry salad sprinkled with lots of chopped parsley and served with this seriously garlicky sauce.

Prep time: 20 minutes | Cooking time: 1 hour 5 minutes

SERVES

Four

INGREDIENTS

For the garlic sauce (makes 175ml)

• 1 large garlic bulb, separated into cloves, smashed with a knife, peeled and halved
• 6 tbsp olive oil
• 3 fresh thyme sprigs, leaves only, to give about 1 tbsp
• 2 fresh sage sprigs, leaves only
• 85g granulated sugar
• Juice of 1 lemon

For the salad

• 2 large red onions, about 250g, cut into large chunks
• 2 sweet potatoes, about 650g, peeled and cut into 2.5cm chunks
• 3 tbsp light muscovado sugar
• 2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• ½ a small white cabbage, about 350g, cut into large chunks
• 2 courgettes, about 400g, cut into large chunks
• 25g fresh flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped

METHOD

1. To make the sauce, put the garlic into a small saucepan, pour in half the oil and cook over a low heat for five minutes until the garlic turns a pale golden brown. Remove from the heat, add the herbs, sugar and lemon juice and stir until the sugar has dissolved.
2. Transfer to a blender or a small food processor and blitz until smooth, or use a stick blender in the pan. Stir in the remaining oil and add salt and pepper.
3. Preheat the oven to 150C/130C fan/Gas 2.
4. Put the red onions and sweet potatoes into a roasting tin. Sprinkle with the sugar and half the garlic, then drizzle with two tablespoons of the oil and season with salt and pepper. Using your hands, toss the vegetables in the oil and sugar until evenly coated.
5. Put the white cabbage and courgettes into a separate roasting tin, sprinkle with the remaining garlic and olive oil, then add salt and pepper and mix.
6.  Roast all the vegetables for about one hour, turning once or twice, until they are soft and very lightly browned. Take out of the oven and leave to cool.
7. Transfer the roasted vegetables to a serving bowl, sprinkle with the chopped parsley and spoon over 125ml of the garlic sauce.Leftover sauce will keep for two to three days in the fridge.