The a-typical roast

One day last winter I stumbled across this recipe here - for Roast Broccoli. They dubbed it 'The Best Broccoli Of Your Life'. Ya know what? It really is pretty damned good. I would NEVER have even considered roasting broccoli before!

I love the combination, the garlic, the lemon and yes, I even add a small bit of grated cheese (not Parmesan though as we never have that in the house, but just whatever we have). The kids love it too (except the 2 year old, nothing will get him to love vegies at the moment!).

Of course, I made a few changes to make it cheaper and easier, so I will share my version of the recipe for the more budget conscious readers of mine.

Also, I now not only roast broccoli with that recipe, but I do cauliflower and carrot too. Those 3 make a great combination, and I wouldn't have thought about roasting cauli originally either. Normally I only like cauliflower if its covered in cheese sauce. But that's not really the most feasible option with 3 of my family lactose intolerant. They are ok with the tiny amount of cheese in this recipe, but not with a full dairy cheese sauce (I do actually make a lactose free white sauce these days using Anchors Zero Lacto, flavouring it with garlic flakes and whatever else I might like to add for some zing, and sometimes a small amount of cheese too).

The Amazing Roast Broccoli (cauli, carrot....)

Preheat oven to around 200*c
Cut your broccoli and cauliflower into florets, and cut up your carrot as you please
Put in a roasting dish and toss with oil, salt and pepper
Sprinkle over some dried garlic granules (original recipe uses real garlic cloves that are peeled and sliced, feel free to do this instead, I just always forget to buy fresh garlic and when I DO remember to buy it I always forget we have it haha).

Roast in the oven for 20-25mins

Zest a lemon over the vegies and squeeze the juice over them too. Sprinkle over some finely grated cheese (Parmesan if you have it).

The original recipe also used pine nuts and basil, the version in the link above left them out and I did too. I'd add the basil if I still had my basil plant, but my 2yo saw to my herbs a year or so ago, sometime after he learnt to crawl....

So yeah, try the recipe, you won't regret it.