merrifood

Baked cannellini beans with roasted vegetables

Posted by merrifood on November 20, 2012 · 2 Comments 

FINALLY – something that can officially go in my “nice” category.  This past weekend, I got to go back to Sydney for the first time since my Manila relocation, which means it’s been a solid 3 months since I have been able to cook and bake in my kitchen.  As you may expect, I went just a bit kitchen-crazy, cooking and baking for a solid 4 hours my first night back and foregoing sleep to bake more (and it was so worth it).  So now I finally have some actual recipes to share with you.

The first thing I had to do even before baking was cook up a new variation on roasted vegetables.  I realize most of my cooking consists of variations on roasted vegetables, but I promise this is a fantastic new way to go about it.  I really like the addition of the beans for protein and I’ve never actually tried putting beans in the oven before, but they cook really nicely along with the vegetables.  I also love the roasted garlic in it.  This is a great recipe to make just before you are about to eat a lot of baked goods.

Baked cannellini beans with roasted vegetables (adapted from Wishful Chef)

This makes quite a large batch – serves about 4, or one particularly vegetable starved person for dinner and two lunches or so

Ingredients

1 large sweet potato, diced
3-4 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 container of cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
2 heads of broccoli, diced to florets size
6-8 cloves garlic, peeled
1 1/2 cups cannellini beans, rinsed and drained (basically just take a can)
2 tsps of mixed spices (I used thyme, rosemary, and oregano – you could use any blend, including parsley or basil)
Salt (sea salt preferable) and ground pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 425 F/200 C. Prep all your veggies.  I put the sweet potatoes, carrots, and garlic in one baking dish and put that in the oven first, and then the broccoli and tomatoes in the oven in a separate baking dish since they cook faster.  Feel free to pour some olive oil on the veggies but I typically just use non-stick spray and then add a teaspoon at the end.

Roast the veggies until they are tender, opening the oven after about 15 minutes to toss it around.  I find that the carrots/sweet potatoes take about 30 minutes whereas the broccoli takes only about 15.  After about 25 minutes for the carrot/sweet potato mixture, dump in the beans and continue to roast for another 5-10 minutes, until the beans are golden.  Just tasting is the best way to make sure everything is done – I hate overcooking broccoli so make sure to check it!

Then dump everything into a bowl, season with the spices and a bit of olive oil, and stir away, tasting liberally of course.

Carrots, sweet potatoes, and peeled garlic cloves ready to go into the oven

Broccoli and tomatoes before…

And after

Final product – everything mixed together

This recipe was just so great – mostly because it was breaking my massive hiatus away from my wonderful kitchen, but also because the ingredients all come together really nicely and it doesn’t feel like a vegetarian dish.  My carnivorous friend who loves meat and typically sneers at vegetarian dishes actually really enjoyed this (or at least he said he did), so I am going to take that as proof that a dish like this is quite versatile.