Roast Mediterranean Vegetable Salad with Roasted Garlic & Pesto Dressing

This is such a simple one pot dish, which is fantastic for those rushed mid-week suppers, and once it’s in the oven, its more or less leftalone, leaving you to get on with more important things. I usually make a big batch of this, as the vegetables are fab in a pitta bread the following day with some low fat cream cheese…….so it’s a case of 2 birds, 1 stone.

Ingredients

• 1 aubergine, sliced
• 1 red pepper roughly sliced
• 1 courgette, sliced
• 6-8 mushrooms, quartered
• 1 red onion, sliced
• 2 tomatoes, quartered
• 1 tbsp of thyme leaves
• ½ tbsp of chopped rosemary
• ½ can of drained and rinsed chickpeas
• 1 finely sliced deseeded red chilli
• 1 tbsp of balsamic vinegar
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 cloves of garlic
• Salt and pepper
• Chopped mint, basil and flat leaf parsley
• Rocket leaves
• dressing

Dressing

• ½ tbsp of basil pesto
• 1 tbsp of water
• Juice of half a lemon
• Salt and pepper
• ½ tbsp of balsamic vinegar

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees
2. In a roasting tray, place all the chopped vegetables and scatter the fresh herbs on top, the red chilli, the balsamic vinegar and the oil, and season well.
3. Chop one of the cloves of garlic finely and add to the mixture and just place the other garlic clove in the mixture still with the skins on.
4. Toss the vegetables so that everything is evenly coated.
5. Roast in the oven for 20-25 minutes, turning once or twice
6. In the meantime for the dressing, whisk all the ingredients together.
7. Once the vegatables are cooked, remove from the oven and remove the garlic in its skin.
8. Add the chopped herbs and the can of chickpeas and toss well.
9. Squeeze the roast garlic out of its skin and mash with a fork. Then add it to the dressing mixture. Whisk well to break up the garlic.
10. To serve, place some rocket (or spinach) on a plate, lay the vegetable mixture on top, and drizzle with the roast garlic and pesto dressing.

This is one of my favourite low fat dinners, I’m surprised I haven’t blogged it before now actually. I mostly eat this as a main meal, but works really well as a side to a Sunday roast.

*Tip make sure when chopping the vegetables, to chop them all the same size to ensure they cook evenly.