Now that some of you have your “Sam” fix, I can get back to our cooking experiments.  When I last wrote we were discussing The Dutch Oven Cookbook.  We have done a few more recipes for the book, and here they are.

Maple-Glazed Roasted Root Vegetables

This recipe ROCKED!  We have made it several times and maybe tweeked it just a bit.  We were introduced to a new spice called Garam Masala.  Those of you who cook indian food will recongnize it.   We actually added a little bit of hot sauce to this just to round out the flavor a little bit.  The original recipe follows.

1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cubed
2 medium parsnips, peeled, halved, and cut at an anle in 1-inch slices
2 medium turnips, peeled and stemmed
2 large carrots, peeled and stemmed
4 large shallots, peeled, stemmed, and halved
3 Tbsp Olive Oil
3 Tbsp Maple Syrup
3 Tbsp Brown suger
1/2 tsp of grated Nutmeg
1 tsp of garam masala
Salt and Pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 F

In a small bowl combine the olive oil, maple syrup, brown sugar, nutmeg, garam masala, salt, and pepper.  Pour the mixture over the root vegetable that are combined in a 5 1/2 quart dutch oven.  Roast uncovered for 30 minutes or until fork tender.

Now we did ours in a 9×13 pyrex pan and found that we needed to roast it for an hour or so before the vegies were tender.  We also added a little hot sauce to the wet mixture the second time we made this, and it did improve the flavor for us.