We’re heading in to the perfect time of year to be buying up root vegetables. At their freshest, all of the natural sugars have yet to turn to starch and biting into a carrot or beet really isn’t so far off from a tree-plucked peach. As time goes on though, as much as root vegetables tend to keep for months under the proper conditions, they tend to lose a bit of that original luster, and you have to try a little bit harder to coax out their sweetness.

The easiest way is roasting. Even the natural sweetness of a potato is brought out after basking in high oven temperatures. Sometimes though, I like to cheat, adding a tablespoon or so of sugar that lightly caramelizes as well and brings the whole dish together. Sugar might seem like an unusual ingredient in savory cooking, but in many cases it’s actually quite welcome. In an effort to use up my herb garden before winter hits (there’s hardly enough light inside to keep a cactus alive), I tossed some rosemary and oregano with carrots and called it a dish. Sweet root vegetables and a little smear of butter, what could be better? They made a nice accompaniment to a barbecued steak dinner.

Roasted Sweet Herb Carrots

• 2 pounds small carrots, peeled and quartered to equal sizes
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 sprig rosemary
• 1 sprig oregano
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons unsalted butter
• salt and pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees with a sheet pan inside.
2. Meanwhile, place carrots in a large pot of salted water and bring to a boil. Cook until they can be pierced with a fork, but not so easily that it goes right through and breaks the carrot. You can, of course, omit the boiling procedure, but I like it because things tend to cook more evenly. Drain the carrots, putting the colander back over the pot for a minute to evaporate any excess liquid.
3. Remove the hot pan from the oven, drizzle the oil into the pan and tilt it to coat. Toss in the rosemary and oregano sprigs and get hit with a blast of herbal fragrances, then add the carrots. Sprinkle the sugar evenly over them and return to the oven to roast for 20 minutes, turning once or twice.
4. When the carrots have roasted up, remove the herb sprigs, dissolve the pat of butter into the carrots and season liberally with black pepper and salt. Serve immediately.

I bought myself a rotisserie a couple of weeks ago. The contraption is specifically designed to be used with a propane barbecue, which is something I wasn’t aware of when I bought it, and I’ve tried everything save designing mounting brackets for my charcoal barbecue to make it work properly for me. Our first attempt to rotisserie chickens used over a bag of charcoal and almost three hours of cooking time as the spit kept falling out of the turning crank (why it doesn’t lock, I’ll never understand) every couple of minutes. It was a tedious (but delicious!) endeavor much more suited to two people.

My second attempt was also with chicken, but alone this time, and after kneeling over a bunch of firey coals for half an hour trying to figure out an optimal height and mounting with a makeshift apparatus, all while under the searing sun, I threw in the towel after dropping the chicken on the ground. I charred the skin until I was certain I’d eliminated any 15 second rule hazards, popped it into my oven and finished it there.

I still had a bunch of dying, but blistering hot coals that I didn’t want to go to waste, so I utilized them to cook up a bunch of peppers. Roasted peppers are delicious any which way, but like virtually anything, the flavor imparted by smoke and charcoal definitely improves matters. Roasting red peppers is possibly the best introduction to cooking to someone who has professed being doomed as a cook because there is only one real rule: burn the food as much as possible. Quite literally, it is the burning of the skin that makes the flesh so sweet and makes the skins so easy to remove, and it is difficult to go beyond that point and actually reduce an entire pepper to ash.

Green peppers are simply bell peppers that have not fully ripened and are therefore not as sweet as red peppers because they have not developed as much sugar content. This is why when you see roasted bell peppers, they are almost universally of the more colorful variety. They also contain more vitamins and nutrients. More flavorful and more nutritious, there’s little reason not to prefer red peppers when it comes to cooking.

There are many things you can do with these peppers once they’ve been roasted, but I typically stuff them with a creamy cheese (such as chevre or mozzarella), bake them and drizzle them with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, or toss them ontop pizza or in a pasta dish. They’re also excellent with chickpeas (as well as blended into hummus) and virtually anywhere you’d use tomatoes and/or red chilies.

Fire Roasted Bell Peppers

You can use an oven broiler, barbecue, blowtorch or even put the peppers directly on a gas burner. The key is to place the peppers as close as possible to a high source of heat until the outside has completely charred, turning as required from a safe distance with a pair of tongs. Afterward, transfer the peppers to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and allow them to steam in their skins while cooling, which will ease in their removal later. Once cooled, simply brush the charred bits off with your fingers, slice and seed.

I always get a kick out of Crimini mushrooms labeled as “baby portobellos” to make an extra buck. It’s true, that’s what Crimini mushrooms are — young portobellos — but young mushrooms should actually cost less money, not more, because they took less time to grow. Portobellos, large and small, are a very hearty mushroom capable of being a reasonable meat substitute. This is how I have substituted them for chicken in this dish without fault.

Often chicken will be dredged in a crispy batter coating prior to being adorned with its tomato and cheese accompaniments for such a dish, but not only do mushrooms not fare so well with breading because of their high moisture content, but breading things that are going to be covered in sauce always seems like a strange practice to me. Of course, this whole process could be hurried by buying a jar of sauce and baking it along with the mushrooms, but the flavors are more concentrated and the meal less runny when things are done separately.

Few things trump a good tomato sauce and gooey cheese dish. I dare say you could put anything under there and still make mouths happy. I think I hear an eggplant calling my name…

Portobello Parmesan

• 19 ounce can plum tomatoes
• sugar, salt and red pepper flakes to taste
• 4 portobello mushroom caps, stems and gills removed
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• (optional) 4 slices of Genoa salami
• 6 ounces mozzarella or provolone cheese, grated
• 2 ounces parmigiano reggiano, grated

1. Pour the tomatoes into a pot and cook over medium heat until the liquid has nearly entirely evaporated and the tomatoes are falling apart. Break apart with a spoon and season to taste with salt, sugar and red pepper flakes to make a very basic tomato sauce.
2. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
3. Place the portobellos in a high-high resistant dish, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and roast in the oven until tender, about 10-15 minutes. Remove from the oven, pat dry and preheat the broiler to high.
4. Put a slice of salami in each mushroom cap, top with a few tablespoons of tomato sauce and grated cheese. Repeat with remaining ingredients.
5. Make the cheese bubble up to golden gooey deliciousness about 6″ away from the broiler. You may need to prop the oven door open an inch to keep the broiler from shutting off. Allow to cool slightly before serving or risk scalding via mushroom juices.

The mushroom stems can be roasted along with the caps and eating as is, or chopped up and adding to whatever dish mushrooms are deemed appropriate. These were served with simply boiled broccoli dressed with grated Parmesan cheese and a drizzle of a basil and garlic oil I had leftover from a roasted red pepper dish.

Most people that’ve eaten in a Greek restaurant have tried saganaki, the fried and flambéed cheese doused in lemon juice to kill the flames and give some much needed acidity to balance the briny saltiness of the cheese itself. Many cheeses are used for saganaki, one in particular being halloumi.

Halloumi was my first introduction to cooking cheeses, that is, cheeses that aren’t used as an ingredient for their melting properties, like mozzarella, but that can hold their own in a pan, just like a steak. It is dense, dry and almost unenjoyably salty in its raw state, not unlike biting into an ounce of feta, but briefly ascends to greatness the moment it is cooked.

I was originally planning on throwing together a salad of halloumi, watermelon and mint, because I’d never made a watermelon salad before and I have entirely too much mint in my garden. However, the figs leftover from the Tarte Tatin were too tempting to pass up, so I went another route. Again cooking the figs to bring out their sweetness, and pairing them with balsamic vinegar for a mellow acidity that halloumi needs to keep it in check, this made a nice dinner for the evening.

Fig and Halloumi Salad

• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 2 tablespoons neutral flavored oil (canola, etc.)
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon water
• salt and pepper

• 8 black figs, stemmed and halved
• 8 ounces halloumi cheese, sliced into 1/2″ pieces
• 5 ounces mixed greens

1. To prepare the vinaigrette: combine the vinegar, oils, syrup, mustard and water in a jar with a tightly fitting lid and shake until emulsified. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
2. To prepare the salad: Heat a large nonstick pan or grill over medium-high heat and cook the figs, cut side up, until they begin to pool with syrup. Set aside.
3. Cook the halloumi until browned and semi-softened, then flip to cook the other side. Once the cheese is ready, toss the mixed greens with the prepared vinaigrette and arrange on plates with the cooked figs and halloumi; serve immediately.

The thyme has started flowering and I’m never sure if you’re supposed to pick off the herb flowers because it makes the rest of the herb taste bland or if you should leave them on because it attracts pollenating insects. I guess it’s not a huge dilemma as I tend to pick them as they flower simply because I love the way the buds taste and look in a dish. Unfortunately I didn’t capture any of that in this picture because I’m a notoriously horrible photographer. There’s a reason why Bread is Pain is completely void of images…

This isn’t a particularly novel recipe, but simple is often best. I just let the foil packet stay warmed on one side of our fire pit grill while I grilled some eggplant for a grilled eggplant, cherry tomato and spelt salad and cooked up some flank steaks. The flavors of the thyme and oil absorb into the potatoes while they finish cooking. Delicious.

Packet Potatoes with Thyme Flowers

• 1 pound starchy potatoes, cubed
• 3 cloves garlic, lightly crushed
• 1/4 cup thyme flowers, loosely packed
• 2-3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• salt and black pepper

1. Place potatoes in a large pot of salted water and bring to a boil. Cook until they are just fork tender and then drain completely. You could just cook them completely on the grill too, of course.
2. Toss potatoes with garlic, thyme flowers, olive oil and a generous sprinkle of salt and freshly cracked pepper.
3. Make a foil packet by tearing off a large rectangle of aluminum foil, folding it in half to create a square, then folding over and crimping the sides several times to seal.
4. Pour the seasoned potatoes into the packet, seal the top and toss onto the cooler area of your grill while you do your cooking. When the rest of your food is ready, simply tear into the center, pull away the foil and serve.

The zest of a lemon would also be quite welcome here!