Roasted vegetable and cabbage salad

We’ve been eating salad often the last few weeks. Mainly because we go out during the week and eat way too much and have to make up for it by having salad for dinner during the week. This week we decided to do grilled vegetables on top of a bed of roasted cabbage. I used sweet vegetables so that we could toss the salad with either a balsamic vinegar or some chipotle infused olive oil.

Ingredients:

  • Sweet potato
  • Sweet yellow onion
  • Carrots
  • Cauliflower
  • Poblano pepper
  • Cabbage
  • Thyme
  • Rosemary
  • Olive oil
  • Salt & Pepper

Steps:

Chop all vegetables. The sweet potatoes and the carrots take the longest to cook, so keep the slices thin. I like to slice the poblano thin. The cabbage should be sliced into thin ribbons. Toss the vegetables with a bit of olive oil and your spices. I used thyme and chopped rosemary from our garden, sea salt, and cracked black pepper.

Chopped vegetables

Oil a grill pan and cook the vegetable mixture over a low heat. This probably takes 20 – 30 minutes.

Grill pan

While the vegetables are cooking, prepare the cabbage. Toss the thinly sliced cabbage with olive oil, salt, and pepper. I usually just spread it out on a foil lined baking pan and use my oil sprayer to give the cabbage a light coat of oil.

Cabbage ready to be roasted

Roast the cabbage at 400 degrees. Stir it when the cabbage around the edges of the pan starts to brown. You want the cabbage to be uniformly cooked throughout. The total cooking time is about 15 minutes.

Cooked vegetables

Cooked cabbage

Serve the vegetables over a bed of cabbage. Each person can season their vegetables as desired. We tossed our vegetables with balsamic vinegars and olive oils on different nights:  red apple balsamic, chipotle olive oil, and fig balsamic. The red apple balsamic and chipotle olive oil were both from Con Olio Oils and Vinegars here in Austin. The fig balsamic I made myself earlier this year.

Bounty from Con Olio

If you don’t top your dish with cheese like my husband does, then this makes a nice vegan dinner.
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A fig roundup

Well, our giant fig tree has hit a second round of ripening figs so in addition to giving them away, I’ve been making a wide variety of yummy fig recipes. Here’s a roundup of the non-baked goods I’ve recently created.

Fig Infused Vodka

For this, I peeled and chopped figs, added them to a mason jar along with a split vanilla bean, and covered them with Tito’s Vodka. I let the mixture marinate in the fridge for two weeks before straining out the figs. We tried one drink recipe with the vodka but it wasn’t super good. Anyone have good fig drink recipes? Please let me know in the comments!

Peeled and chopped fig

Figs and a vanilla bean infusing in Tito’s Vodka

Straining the figs after two weeks

The final product – fig vodka!

Fig Balsamic Reduction

A friend at work taught me this trick. Take ripe (or almost overripe) figs, chop them up and soak them in balsamic vinegar overnight. The next day, simmer the mixture until it has reduced somewhat. The balsamic should coat a spoon dipped into the mixture. Strain the figs and enjoy in any food that you might use balsamic. So far, I’ve found it’s tasty to drizzle fig balsamic on broiled figs with cheese or onto a fig, cheese, and onion sandwich. Yum!

Figs soaking in balsamic

After reducing the figs and balsamic

The final product! I’ve already made a second batch to refill my bottle.

Fig Compote

I got the idea for fig compote from this roundup of 10 quick fig recipes.  Here’s what I used:

  • 1 cup water
  • 1/2 cup sugar (next time, I would only use 1/4 cup sugar)
  • Cinnamon stick
  • Vanilla extract (my homemade kind)
  • Smattering of whole cloves
  • Sprinkle of ground ginger
  • Lots of figs. If the skin was green, I cut it off. If red, I left it on because it was softer. As the mixture cooked, I had to add more figs to get the compote to thicken to a reasonable consistency.

I combined all of these ingredients and simmered for a long time. After I felt it was finished, I refrigerated half of the mixture and froze the other half. It would be good as a pancake topping or with bread / bagel and cream cheese. It is very sweet, so next time I will reduce the sugar.

Sugar and spice and everything nice

Cooking figs

Cooked and ready to eat fig compote!

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