Here’s one for all fans of winter vegetables – and for those who want to become. As a child I didn’t like roots and tubers, but today I appreciate them a lot due to their warm and deep taste. I love the idea of taking as many sorts as you can get into just one dish – it’s some Swiss bloggers who recently made this gorgeous proposition. I came across the recipe for a ragout of winter vegetables at Claudios blog Anonyme Köche (which would translate to anonymous cooks). A true must-have-plate that has later been re-cooked in the same great style by Robert of lamiacuccina.
I instantly fell in love with the whole idea as it fits just perfectly in winter’s season and re-interpretated the dish with a slight touch of home-made curry powder and some ginger foam. Some crossover of Oriental taste and European country house cuisine – it works quite well as the dark and deep taste of the roots and tubers makes good friends with the warm flavor of the curry spices. As I furthermore love oven-baked vegetables, I used my oven instead of a pot and a pan like Claudio and Robert do. You should absolutely check their versions as well – and I want to deeply thank both of them for the great inspiration!
If you like, take a look at the beauty of winter creatures first. Coming close with the camera feels like entering a world of its own – that was so fascinating that the gallery became a little bit oversized this time.
Here’s my recipe
This one’s a little bit more time-consuming in preparation than most of the other recipes on my blog. But it’s worth the effort. Go and get yourself a variety of winter roots and tubers – maybe your local market or the organic shop will offer a nice choice. I took yellow, orange, violet and black carrots, topinambour, black radish, parsnip, root parsley, rutabaga, and rose potatoes. Take some red onions as well, if you like.
Clean the vegetables – the carrots and the potatoes don’t need to be peeled if they are organically grown. Cut all vegetables into bit-size slices, triangles and wedges – it’s nice to have different shapes. Put a little bit of the light coloured vegetable aside for later use. Take some curry powder and roast gently in a dry pan until you can smell the spices. My curry powder is home-made with cucuma, cumin, cinnamon, ginger, dried garlic (home-made as well), fenugreek, clove, cardamon, chillies, macis, black pepper, and some fleur de sel. But you can buy a good quality powder and it will do a good job as well. Take the roasted spices and mix with some salt and sunflower oil.If you like the taste of the vegetables just enhanced and not dominated by the spices, don’t take too much of it. Cover all your vegetable pieces (besides the ones you left aside) carefully with the oil. Put them into a broad and greased casserole and put I into the preheated oven (160 °C) for about 30 Minutes. Turn the vegetables every ten minutes.
In the meantime prepare the sauce. As I did not blanch the vegetables like Claudio and Robert, I had to go for another solution: Take the small vegetable pieces you left aside and fry them in a small pot with few sun flower oil together with black pepper, a garlic clove and fresh ginger cut into small stripes. Add water and let simmer for about 15 Minutes. Increase the heat and reduce the liquid to the half. Drain the vegetables and keep the liquid. Beat the reduction with butter and cream (or with soy cream if you are a vegan), add salt and pepper. Put the sauce into a blender with few pieces of the cooked vegetables. Mix it until you get a nice foam. Arrange the vegetables on big plates, spread the foamy sauce and add some roasted sesame seeds on top. Et voilà!
Like always, here’s also some Berlin insights by Arne. The pics show – like today’s food topic – unusual insigts to well known places:
Food with a View 
Great dish!!
Did you ever try to bake the roots in salt. It boosts the flavour enormously.
Maybe like this 🙂 🙂
http://tomatenbluete.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/ja-is-denn-heut-scho-weihnachten/
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Great that you like it – and thanks a lot for the link and inspiration! The photos of your salty little somethings look absolutely mouth-watering already, I can well imagine the great taste – will surely give it a try next time!
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I could kill for the multicoloured carrots (they don’t sell around here anymore…). Great pics! (as yours are always :-)) And I especially like the idea for the sauce!
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Thanks for the nice compliment ;-)!
The carrots are gorgeous, aren’t they? I also couldn’t find them on the market and at the grocery but finally got them at the biggest organic shop in Berlin as a special offer. I guess I will have to wait for the next opportunity a long time as well. But if you have a garden you could grow them yourself! In case the seeds are sold somewhere, maybe on the internet?
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Yeah, sure, but garden….? Maybe I could ask my best friend or my Mum…but that’s a long wait. One more question. Did you roast the black radish with the others? I thought you usually eat it raw.
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Yes, I baked the black radish along with the other vegetables. It was quite an interesting taste and I will ty a gratin just with it next time to explore it further. If you like to try baked radish I would love to hear how you like it!
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Turn beasts into beauties! Love it!
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Thank you! And again a wonderfull re-description :-)!
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I just put my “beasts” into the oven. Gonna have an orange-sabayon with it!
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You really did? Let me know how it was! Orange-sabayon sounds wonderfull…
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That’s definitively one of the best winter dishes I can imagine. Last week I bought “carrots tricolore” at my favorite online-shop (trying to find such things in my vicinity is nothing but waste of time). After all, there’s one kind of winter vegetable which would harmonize at best with your winter creatures: the so called “Butterrübchen” (don’t know the english equivalent) – tastes like a mixture from rutabaga, turnip cabbage and horseradish. Delicious!
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Thanks so much for the compliment! The main part of it belongs to Claudio and Robert.
Butterrübchen sounds great! Nice orange color also. I will definitely look out for those turnips and try, if I get some. The mixture of tastes sounds a little bit similar to Teltower turnips, which I love.
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Yummy and as always great pics, not just the food ones 🙂 Colourfull carrots are real cool and taste somewhat different or its my imagination 😉 I havent got a garden but last year I grew some “Harlekin carrots” in a big pot (Mauerkübel) on my roofterrase. It worked really well and i had a constant supply
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Wow, you got a roof terrasse, that’s adorabel! Surely a perfect place to raise not just carrots. I don’t know Harlekin carrots yet, but sounds interesting – and I also have the impression that colored carrots taste somewhat different, more intense.
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Gefällt mir auch angebraten !
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Gebraten, gebacken, gedünstet – diese Wurzel- und Knollen-Mischung ist wirklich für Vieles geeignet. Nochmals lieben Dank für die Inspiration!
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