Warm Roast Vegetable & Lentil Salad with Zahtar & Sundried Tomatoes

A few weeks ago I was busy creating, styling and photographing salad recipes for Vicki’s Spring Nourish Magazine, which has just gone to print. If you are fortunate to live in the Waikato or Bay of Plenty areas you will be familiar with their beautiful, almost organic feeling magazine with its quality mat paper that feels so right for promoting seasonal produce, farmers markets and vibrant food recipes. You can’t help but brush your hand across the pages when leafing through it, almost feels like the vegetables will spring out in your hand.

It was an interesting exercise preparing dishes for an edition a couple of months in advance when all the produce is not yet available, I really wanted to use asparagus…oh how I crave asparagus season which is still a few weeks away. instead I opted for beans, cauliflower and root vegetables which will carry us through from now until October. As well as this salad I made a Mexican Style Coleslaw which will be perfect for those burger and BBQ days, a Vibrant Three Bean salad and Cauliflower, Anchovy & Caper Salad for the magazine.

Ingredients
200g baby beetroot, peeled and halved
200g baby carrots, scrubbed and stalk removed
400g tinned lentils
4 sun dried tomatoes
Handful fresh parsley
Handful fresh coriander
1 tsp zaatar spice
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 Tbsp olive oil
salt & pepper

Method
Pre heat oven to 180C
Drain the tinned lentils, then place in a large bowl.
Place the beetroot and carrots on a roasting tray and coat with 2 tablespoons of olive oil. keep the beetroot and carrot separate if you don’t want the beetroot to turn the carrots pink.
Roast for 20 minutes, they’ll still be a little crunchy, then add to the bowl of lentils.
Blend together the sundried tomatoes, parsley, coriander, zahtar, balsamic and olive oil to a thick dressing.
Add the dressing to the bowl with the lentils & roasted vegetables and mix through.
Season with salt & pepper to taste and serve warm or chill in the fridge to serve later cold.

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