Yesterday, I made Roasted Parsnip & Apple Salad from Hugh’s latest book.

Ooh, nom, nom, nom. The dressing really makes this salad. Both sharp and sweet at the same time, the lemon juice is essential, the sweetening could be varied, as could the mustard.

I made two jacket potatoes each. DP had both of his and I have the other left over for lunch tomorrow with the rest of the salad. This combination would make a very yummy packed lunch. Bake the jacket potato in the usual way and either halve it, or chop it into pieces to make it easier to eat, and pack all the elements into a lunch box.


for 2
Roasted Parsnip & Apple Salad
2 medium parsnips, 250g, Asda frozen roasted parsnips, 680g/91p, 33p
or used fresh and roast them
half tblsp oil, 1p
2 apples,  250g Asda British red apples, 650g/98p, 38p
dressing
2 tbslps oil, 4p
1 tbslp lemon juice, Asda 250ml/79p, 5p
half garlic clove or equivalent, Asda, Taj frozen crushed garlic, 97p/400g, 1p
tsp of any mustard, Asda SmartPrice coarse grain, 48p/180g, 1p
2 tsps muscovado sugar, or honey if you have it, or ordinary sugar, honey £1.25/425g, 3p
salt and pepper

total of 86p, but only needed half in the end, so 42p

Carrot & Raisin Salad
200g carrots, Asda 57p/kg, 11p
25g salted peanuts, 48p/200g,  6p
25g raisins,  sultanas 500g/84p, 4p

total of 21p

 

2 x 250g potato at about 80p/kg, 40p

Total of £1.07, 54p each

Although I halved the parsnip and apple salad quantities, this combination meant that I only used half of that quantity, so a quarter of the original recipe. I put half in the fridge for over the weekend.

Wash your potatoes, remove the eyes if necessary. Rub the skins with a little oil and salt. It is a good idea to push a skewer through potatoes when roasting them in the oven as it helps to cook the insides much quicker. Bake in a medium oven for about an hour.

The parsnips are roasted for this salad. If you are using the Asda frozen ones, they are already roasted. If you are using raw parsnips, top and tail them and slice into medallions. No need to peel. Toss in a little oil, salt and pepper and roast in a medium oven for 20 minutes. Put them in at the same time as the jacket potatoes. Meanwhile, chop the apples into quarters and decore them. I peeled mine as I used windfalls. If I hadn’t been using windfalls, I would have left them unpeeled.

Once the parsnips have softened, give them a stir and add the apple pieces. Continue cooking for another 10-15 minutes.

While they are cooking, put all the dressing ingredients in a small bowl and whisk together.

Take them out of the oven, and while they are still warm, pour over the dressing, stir well, and leave for the flavours to mingle.

While the vegetables are cooking, top and tail the carrots and peel only if necessary. Coarsely grate them and add the peanuts and raisins. Use sultanas or any other dried fruit if you can’t get raisins, but use raisins if you can as they count as purple in your 5 A Day, and purple is the hardest one to get.

At this time of year, a couple of fresh plums would work very well in this salad.

If you want to minimise fuel usage, you could gently pan fry the parsnips, adding the apples once softened. Cook the potatoes in a microwave, slow cooker or Remoska.

The original recipe adds toasted hazelnuts to the parsnip salad. They would have been lovely, but I didn’t have any and used flaked almonds. They looked nice, but I couldn’t really taste them and have left them out here. With all the other flavours going on, there is no need to use them if you don’t want to. If you do want to use them, toast 25g of hazelnuts, or any other nuts you want to use, and scatter them over at the last minute. If you add them too soon, they will soften and lose their crunch.

Hugh suggests swapping carrots for the parsnips and using raw plums in place of the apples, with a pinch of cinnamon or five spice in the dressing, which sounds very good indeed.

Many combinations of roasted veg would work, swede and onion, red pepper and fennel, celery and pear. Work with what you have and flavour with the things that go with them, or use the lemon and honey dressing, that would go with most things. Or maybe use a little curry powder or paste for a very different flavour.