Warm Roast Vege Salad

I'm happy to report I am in my home town of Adelaide, South Australia with my nearest and dearest. There's been been a few things going on, so we thought we'd take a few days off plus Easter to see how everyone's going on.

Its been 41C (106F) degrees, the air conditioner is broken, so you do not feel like doing much! We've swam in the ocean, had lots of ice cream and hours out the back of Mum and Dads overlooking the valley with about 50 lorikeets who come to bath and eat oatmeal from my Dad's little bird sanctuary he's set up. Pure bliss if you ask me.

Mum and Dad have a very nice little vegetable patch, so my sister and I set out to make dinner with what we had at home. It turned out really well. I must admit, during the process I didn't know whether beetroot and pumpkin would work together, but they did! Combined with cherry tomatoes, lemon, rosemary and garlic they were a marriage made in heaven.

1/2 butternut pumpkin, peeled and diced
1 small beets, scrubbed but leave on tops and tails so they don't bleed
4 large garlic cloves
2 sprigs rosemary
3 tbs parsley, chopped
1 lemon
2 big handfuls of cherry tomatoes
4 tbs olive oil
1/2 tsp chilli flakes
1 1/2 cups rice
1 tsp vegetable stock


Preheat the oven to 180C.

Place the pumpkin, beets,rosemary and whole garlic cloves in an oven dish with a couple of glugs of olive oil and salt and pepper and toss. Pop this into the oven for 45 minutes.

Cook the rice according the packet instructions, preferably the steam method so you don't have to drain all the flavour away. Before cooking add half the cherry tomatoes and the vegetable stock. Squash the tomatoes with your hands into the pot of rice.

Next prepare the dressing. In a small bowl add the rind of the lemon, the juice of the lemon 2 tbs of olive oil, lots of salt and pepper, chilli flakes and whisk. Remove the roasted garlic cloves from the oven and push the sweet flesh away from the garlic peel. Mash with a fork and add to the dressing and mix further.

Cut the remaining cherry tomatoes in half and finely chop the parsley. Next, top and tail the beets and peel and cut into quarters.

Now to assemble. Add half of the dressing, the cut cherry tomatoes and half of the parsley to the rice and mix and pile onto a suitable plate. Toss the pumpkin and beets in the remaining dressing and pile on top of the rice mix, sprinkle with parsley and serve.

(Serves 4)

S