Roasted Vegetable Salad: Yum!

I'm still planning to post the last couple of cookie recipes. Sure, it's too late for 2008 holiday baking, but you'll have plenty of time to test them before 2009!

But for today, I want to post my delicious, healthy lunch of roasted vegetable salad. I had some beautiful vegetables that needed to be used before they started to go bad, some leftover pine nut cheese, and some leftover pine nuts. It's loosely based on Gillian McKeith's recipe for "Goat's Cheese Salad with Roasted Tomatoes, Peppers and Rocket" (For those of us in the US - rocket=arugula) from the "You are What You Eat Cookbook" This is what I made...

Roasted Vegetable Salad (serves 2)

1 yellow bell pepper, halved and deseeded

3 small tomatoes, quartered

2 slices from a large red onion, cut rings in 1/2

3-4 cremini (baby bella) mushrooms, sliced

2 tsp olive oil

approx 1/4 cup of pine nut "goat cheese"* (i just used the amount I had leftover from a pizza earlier in the week)

fresh spinach (as much as you'd like for your salad base - torn into small pieces)

2 tsp lemon juice

toasted pine nuts and fresh parsley for garnish

Preheat the oven to 395F/200C

Line a baking sheet with foil (or be prepared to scrub it when finished)

Place all the vegetables (peppers cut side up) on the baking sheet. I mixed the onions and mushrooms at one end, put the tomatoes in the middle and had the peppers at the other end. Drizzle vegetables with the olive oil (after drizzling, toss the onions and mushrooms to get them coated a little better. Roast in the oven for 10 minutes.

Spread 1/2 of the pine nut cheese inside each of the pepper halves. Roast for 8 more minutes.

Put a few toasted pine nuts on the top of each pepper and roast for 2 minutes to warm up the pinenuts. If you only have raw pine nuts (I happened to have toasted ones leftover from something else), put the pine nuts on a few minutes earlier so they will toast.

Divide the spinach onto 2 plates. Top with roasted mushrooms and onions. Arrange 1/2 the tomatoes on each plate. Drizzle each with 1 tsp lemon juice. Place 1 of the pepper halves on each salad. Garnish with some fresh parsley

My cute new little plate says it all:

*I make the pine nut cheese from Dr. Ben Kim's site with a few changes. I don't like the shallot in it, so I leave it out. I also use WAY more nutritional yeast. It gives it a cheesier flavor and a thicker texture. Play around to make it the way you like it. I rarely make a full batch because I only like to keep it for about 5 days in the refrigerator. I find that basing the recipe on 1 cup pine nuts makes enough for a pizza with a little left over for a couple tortilla pizzas or other small things like this salad.