Roasted Roots over Rice with Gravy
current situation: lunch
Lunch, and there is no meat in it, and nobody at the table would describe it as a vegetarian meal. That is because of the gravy.
A proper dark gravy built on roasted vegetable scraps — onion skins, carrot ends, the burnt bits off the tray — has everything a meat gravy has except the meat. Roast, deglaze, simmer, strain. It takes twenty minutes and it is the difference between this and a plate of vegetables.
The tomato is grilled whole and sits on top like a full stop. Cut it and it goes everywhere; leave it and you break it with a fork at the end.
- Feeds
- 4
- Hands-on
- 25 minutes
- In the oven
- 45 minutes
- Gravy
- From the tray
What you need
The tray
- 5 carrots, in thick rounds
- 3 potatoes, in 1-inch cubes
- 1 small butternut squash, in 1-inch cubes
- 2 onions, in wedges — skins kept for the gravy
- 4 tbsp neutral oil
- Salt and a lot of coarse cracked black pepper
The gravy
- The roasting tray, with everything stuck to it
- 3 tbsp butter
- 3 tbsp flour
- 3 cups vegetable stock
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tsp tomato paste
- 1 bay leaf
To serve
- 4 cups cooked white rice
- 4 tomatoes, grilled whole
- A bunch of chives, chopped
How it goes
1 — Heat the tray empty for ten minutes
450°F with the tray in it. Vegetables onto hot metal start browning on contact instead of sweating while they wait.
2 — Cut everything to about an inch and give it room
Same size, one layer, gaps between. Two trays rather than one crowded one — crowded vegetables steam and go pale, and there is no gravy good enough to fix that.
3 — Forty-five minutes, turned once
Hard roast with real colour at the edges. The carrots wrinkle and go sweet, the squash collapses slightly at the corners, the potato goes crisp.
4 — Grill the tomatoes whole alongside
Whole, oiled, salted, on the same tray or under the broiler for the last ten minutes until the skins split and blacken in patches.
5 — Make the gravy IN the roasting tray
Vegetables out, tray straight onto two burners. Butter and flour whisked into whatever is stuck to it, cooked two minutes, then stock in a splash at a time with the soy, tomato paste and bay.
pro tip — Everything welded to that tray is the entire flavour of this gravy. Scrape hard with a wooden spoon while the stock goes in.
6 — Simmer ten minutes, then strain
Down to something that coats a spoon, then poured through a sieve so it is smooth and dark. Taste for salt.
7 — Rice down, vegetables over, gravy in a pool
Rice spread across the plate, vegetables heaped on, gravy poured into one corner rather than over everything so the roasted edges stay crisp. Tomato on top, chives over, more black pepper.
Lunch. Nobody asked where the meat was. LFG.