Roasting and Baking

The most familiar roast vegetables are, of course, potatoes, but other root vegetables can all be roasted if you parboil them first. Vegetables which contain a lot of sugar such as sweet potatoes and parsnips burn very quickly and should not be roasted at too high a heat. Roast vegetables should have a really crisp exterior and softish centre, and are best roasted in quite a lot of hot fat or oil. One of the great treats are whole cloves of garlic, roasted in their skins with a slowly cooked joint of meat. They become brown and caramelized, with a sweet mellowness within the skin.