Roasted Root Vegetable Salad

Okay, now we're getting down to business! I had to make a dish to bring to a pot luck, so I knew I had an opportunity to use up lots and lots of veggies!

Here we have (starting at the top and going clockwise) lettuce, leeks, strawberry daikon radish, sweet potato, garlic, onion, carrots and lemons. In the center, the large lumpy thing is a celery root, and next to it are some potatoes. The onions and carrots were not from the veggie box, but we have gotten them in the veggie boxes before. The garlic is from the store and the lemons are from my parents' backyard, admittedly not local as they live over 350 miles away, but I was coming from there anyway ;-)

This of course can be scaled smaller to feed less people, and you certainly don't need this kind of variety. But I must say, the end result with all of these veggies was absolutely delicious!

Here's what you'll need to feed about 10 people:

Salad

5 lbs root vegetables

2 tsps salt

1 tbsp black pepper

1/4 cup olive oil

2 medium sized heads of lettuce (not iceberg!)

Dressing

1/4 cup lemon juice

3/4 cup olive oil

1/4 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp prepared mustard

1/2 bulb roasted garlic

Leeks are notoriously dirty vegetables. To clean them, you need to cut them in half lengthwise, leaving the root on to keep the leaves together. Depending on what your leeks look like, you may have to cut up to half of the top off, most of the dark green part. Carefully rinse them under running water.

Make sure to clean between all of the leaves. There usually won't be much dirt closer to the root or the inner layers, but it's better to be safe than sorry. There's nothing like grit to ruin your eating experience. Put the cleaned leeks on a large cookie sheet or broiling pan.

Cut up the remaining root vegetables. I halved the carrots and quartered most of the others. The celery root was pretty big, so I cut it into eighths. I left the skin on most of the vegetables, less waste that way, but sweet potato skins can be weird sometimes, so I peeled it. Not having a lot of experience with celery root, I peeled it pretty aggressively 'cuz it looked like it might be a bit woody. Leave the root end on the onion to keep it together.

Clockwise from the top left: celery root, sweet potato, strawberry daikon radish, carrots, potato and onion.

Cut the top off of the half-bulb of garlic.

Pool a bit of olive oil on the bottom of the pan and put the garlic bulb cut-side down on it.

Toss the vegetables with the olive oil, salt and pepper. It's a bit messy, but it's best to do this with your hands. Make sure to rub down the leeks with oil as well.

Cover the pan with aluminum foil and place in the oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Remove the aluminum foil and the garlic and continue roasting at 350 degrees for an additional 30 minutes.

While the vegetables are roasting, tear the lettuce into bite size pieces and put them in the bottom of a large serving dish.

Using a butter knife or a small steak knife, pop out the roasted garlic cloves.

Smash the garlic cloves well with a fork or with a mortar and pestle. Whisk together all of the ingredients for the dressing. The prepared mustard helps to keep the lemon juice and olive oil from separating.

Once the vegetables are cool enough to touch, cut them into bite size pieces.

Cut the carrots on the bias to make long slices.

Slice the radishes and the celery root. (celery root not pictured)

Cut the potatoes and the sweet potato into chunks.

Holding the root end of the onion pieces, cut up the onion. Be very careful as the onions will be extremely slippery! If you want, you can simply cut off the root end, and leave the onion layers whole.

Cut up the leeks in a similar manner.

Arrange the roasted vegetables on top of the lettuce.

You can mix them all together like I did in the picture, or you can keep them separated to form larger sections of color. Arranging the vegetables that way can be quite pretty, as well as help people chose which vegetables they want if you anticipate picky eaters. I had to arrange the salad in this container because I was transporting it to the pot luck. If it was going to serve this at home, I would have chosen something more presentable, but it still came out looking pretty good!

Bon Apetit!