Root Veggie Roulette

I chose the name “Root Veggie Roulette” for today’s featured dish because it sounds kind of fancy, and a bit like “roulade”, except not. “Roulette” also seemed appropriate because the dish itself was a gamble. As the self-proclaimed “seat of my pants” blogger/cooker on this site, “roulette” is a fitting term for my method of cooking.  (Most of the time, I’m pretty lucky, too!)

With all the delicious root veggies and that giant bottle of Ben’s Maple Syrup that we were recently graced with, the obvious choice was to combine the two in some delicious maple glazed concoction.

I believe there are two tricky parts to a good maple flavor when roasting veggies. The first is to get the veggies hot enough to roast and bring out the flavors without burning the butter and the maple syrup. I usually start with a little oil when roasting the veggies (at between 400-425 on a lipped cookie sheet or roasting pan). In the meantime, I whisk butter and maple syrup together on the stove. The longer/warmer you heat the maple syrup, the “glazier” (if that is a word) it becomes. Once I get things where I want them, I wait until the veggies are just about done, turn off the heat, and drizzle the maple butter onto the veggies. After about 5 minutes (or whenever the rest of my food is done) it’s ready for the serving dish.

The second tricky part of all this is that the carrots cook slower than the parsnips. You can choose to add the carrots to the oven before the parsnips, or you can just cut them thinner than the parsnips.

 I took this dish a step further and went for some extra presentation. Playing off of the idea of a traditional Pommes Anna, I arranged my variety of sliced root veggies in a fun little pattern and when all was cooked, inverted my pan (but not before sneaking a little maple goodness in there). This was one gamble that actually paid off! It was pretty good, the kids were even fooled briefly into thinking it was some sort of cake. They were gravely mistaken, but hey, they ate some veggies!