Root Vegetable Salad | Warming Vegetable Salads

Roasted Root Vegetable Salad: Jerusalem Artichoke & Potatoes with Aubergine

If you’ve read our kale salsa verde recipe, then you’ll know the backstory to this delicious, warming and nutritious roasted vegetable salad. After tasting the first draft of this dish, Shaina definitely felt it could do with some creaminess of a yoghurt. But the addition of the kale salsa as a dressing adds another fresh flavour profile bringing with it zing and pop!

Don’t be deterred by the word salad though! Trust us, this isn’t like any salad you’ve tried and we have a seal of approval from a keen meat eater?!

• 

• 

• 

Autumn vegetable salads

This recipe is great because it uses the most of the produce that’s currently in season! Root vegetables are great because they’re low in calories but high in antioxidants and some are surprisingly nutritious! Different root vegetables contain a variety of vitamins and minerals unique to that one.

We have digressed a bit now, but we won’t leave you in suspense anymore! The rest of the ingredients found in the Abel&Cole box were;

• Aubergine
• Brown Onion
• Potatoes
• Cavolo Nero – as you know
• Green beans

You’ll see below we have introduced new ingredients and left some out that were in the original box. But as we tasted, we knew how we wanted to refine it for next time. This is also something you should feel free to do with the vegetables stated in the recipe. If some are not your favourite tasting vegetable, simply remove it completely or substitute it for a vegetable you do like (that can be roasted to save any extra cooking effort). Create your vegetable salad around your preferences and tastes. We would just like to nudge you in the right direction .. or try things you wouldn’t have thought to before.

Using seasonal produce

What’s great about these Abel&Cole boxes is that you can get so creative. It not only allows you to think plant based but you also start to use up old cupboard food you forget about to build your dish into something more cohesive. They also pick the best produce of the season that is source products within the UK! We feel so inspired and geeking out on you guys here, but we imagine we’re in a mystery box challenge from Masterchef Australia! We’re not ashamed – make cooking fun for you boo!!

You’ll see that there are extra ingredients found in the recipe not in the box. Of course at the time, the original dish was limited to the above ingredients. In order to create a dish that made sense, we had to remove them when finalising and adapting the recipe.

• Shaina did use the green beans in the original creation, however that was used to not waste any of the vegetables.
• We’ve added in jerusalem artichokes in the adapted take of our vegetable salad – the flavour of the artichoke is a wonderful addition to this salad and makes it a little more exciting than just any other salad. 
• The pomegranate seeds provide a burst of freshness needed to offset the creaminess and richness from the yoghurt and vegetables. It also works well with the inspiration leaning towards Middle Eastern dishes.

Do I need the Cavolo Nero crisps?

We essentially added these in for several reasons;

1. There were a lot of leaves in the cavolo nero bunch given,
2. This then allowed us to give a crispy textural element to the dish – Masterchef watch out!

It might sound like a lot of effort, but once you trim your cavolo nero, you simply need to brush some oil on top and pop in the oven on a low heat for up to 10 minutes. That’s it! So simple. We know.

Recipe suggestions & adaptations

We’ve provided a few ways in which you can make a few changes here and there. Some require more effort than others, but then this will adhere to different skill levels of cooks. If some would like to put in a little extra effort here and there, then why not! Same goes to those who would prefer the quicker route – without sacrificing on taste!

Yoghurt or Labneh

If you do like experimenting with how you cook or like making the extra effort with the food you eat to take your tastebuds to the next level then why not replace the yoghurt with Labneh?

Labneh is essentially the same as yoghurt but a lot thicker. It is more like a yoghurt cheese and is mainly served as a Middle Eastern style dip. This yoghurt cheese is creamy and tangy and just elevates this dish nicely.

You can buy labneh online, as we’re not confident local supermarkets will stock this. Alternatively – this is where the extra effort comes in – you could try to make labneh from scratch. It’s fairly simple and all you need is a yoghurt, salt, a muslin cloth and sieve, BUT it will need to be made in advance. Check out this homemade labneh recipe by Feasting at Home. 

Creating different elements of texture

Aubergine

This is definitely not needed AT ALL. We just want to get that out there. Sometimes, we do like to get very creative with our dishes and we mean, isn’t it always fun to see how you can change the same dish? 

So here’s one for you; babaganoush. Okay, not exactly .. no need for the tahini and all of that, no no. We’re not trying to create silly amounts of extra steps, but try this;

• Roast the aubergine whole in the oven with the rest of the vegetables on the tray.
• Once fully cooked and is soft all the way through, peel the skin and mash up the inside flesh to a somewhat smooth consistency. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
• Place a heaped dollop on the bottom of the plate and spread out before placing your roasted vegetables, yoghurt, salsa and crispy kale leaves on the plate.

Also this might be a miss for some people. Aubergine is not a firm favourite vegetable for people, we think mostly due to the texture. So, we’re guessing pureeing it of some sorts doesn’t help that .. and Saphron will attest to that. She won’t be trying this variation out.

Tomatoes

We used all the cherry tomatoes found in the vegetable in our kale salsa for this salad. But if you had extra tomatoes lying around we’d definitely recommend using them in the salad too. You know us, we love the fruit and any way to incorporate them into our meals to reap those magical tomato benefits is always welcome. 

Thinking of ways to incorporate tomatoes in the salad? No worries, why not try;

• Roasting tomatoes – when you add your diced aubergines to roast, pop a couple of fresh cherry tomatoes on the tray for a juicy pop in your salad.
• Pickling tomatoes – If you wanted to be a little extra here, you could add some pickled tomatoes for a vibrant fresh taste to cut through the richness and creaminess in the salad.

Serving: Dip style sharing platter

Why not adapt the dish slightly to create one big sharing platter leaning towards a dip style. Perfect for those small intimate get togethers or a starter for a dinner party. Simply:

• Grab a large plate and dollop on large quantities of labneh – enough for how many servings. If you decide to prepare the recipe like this, we’d highly suggest using labneh instead of yoghurt, as it is usually used as a dip. 
• Load your labneh with the roasted vegetables – try and cut these up in smaller pieces when roasting.
• Add your kale salsa as a dressing.
• Garnish with pomegranate seeds and drizzle with plenty of olive oil.
• Serve with delicious warm bread to be scooped up with.

Oh if you do decide to create the aubergine as a dip textural element too, then portion the platter by alternating between dollops of labneh and mashed aubergine and then continue with the rest of the steps above.

Roasting the Vegetables

To roast the vegetables for our salad, we use a layering process. Sort of .. Kind of. You’ll understand what we mean once we explain.

1. Once you’ve sliced up your onions, scatter them in a nice layer on your roasting tray. Try and spread them out as much as you can to fill up spaces.
2. Drizzle with oil and season with some salt. Not too heavy handed!
3. Start to add your cut up potatoes and jerusalem artichokes and garlic.
4. Season with the spices stated in the recipe below. Sprinkle some extra salt and maybe an extra drizzle of oil.
5. DO NOT MIX. We know this may sound weird, but we want to let all the ingredients cook and roast how they are.
6. Halfway through the vegetable cook time, once we need to add our aubergine, take your tray out the oven. Add your aubergine and now mix everything together.

We personally feel that when we allow the veg to cook undisturbed – you know, without messing them around with spices – their natural yummy flavour is brought out first, which we then mix to infuse with the spices. It’s all just a little more developed, not to sound pretentious or anything.