Oven roasted vegetables in tomato sauce

Oven roasted vegetables are always easy and delicious. If you have a lot of veggies and are not in a rush but don’t feel like spending all your time in the kitchen it is the perfect light vegetarian dinner. You quickly chop everything up, toss it in the oven and your feast is ready in an hour.

Depending on what you have in your pantry there are endless variations. The added tomato juice is my secret trick to make it perfectly moist and juicy, making sure the vegetables never dry out while baking. The feta cheese just makes the sauce perfectly creamy and tasty.

Polenta is a budget-friendly delicious gluten free side dish. The texture is varying from creamy to thick depending on the way you prepare it. In the traditional Hungarian cuisine a common way to prepare it is to bake it in the oven for a bit to get an almost cake like and sliceable texture. Making creamy polenta is the simplest; you either make it right before serving or keep it covered and whisk with a splash of extra water when you reheat it for serving.

For a more elegant serving you can even make small dollops with 2 tablespoons after the resting and carefully place them on the plates.

Ingredients (for 2 people):

For the vegetables

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 parsnip (peeled)
• 4 small carrot (or 2 bigger) (peeled)
• ½ courgette (ends removed, sliced)
• ½ leek (washed, sliced)
• 1 bell pepper (seeds removed, sliced)
• 8 cherry tomatoes
• 4 spring fresh rosemary
• 100 grams feta cheese
• 200 ml tomato juice

For the polenta

• 100 grams polenta (coarsely grated corn)
• 400 millilitre vegetable stock
• Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 200 Celsius and grease a small baking tray with the olive oil.

Cut carrot and parsnip lengthwise into 0.5-1 cm thick blocks. Tip all vegs in the oven dish, add rosemary, season with freshly grated pepper and add half of the crumbled feta. Mix with tomato juice, cover with aluminium foil and bake for 1 hour.

In the meantime prepare polenta; with a tablespoon sprinkle polenta into the boiling stock while stirring constantly and quickly whisk together until smooth. Let it boil for a few minutes and remove from fire, let it rest for 10 minutes while covered.

Divide polenta and vegs over two plates and crumble the remaining feta on top.