Fire Roasted Veggies, Literally

Oh what weather we have been having.  days of glorious sun, warmth, spring emerging.

To take advantage of the weather, Dylan and I decided to cook outside over the fire.  We sipped lemonade and I satisfied my pregnancy related need for steak.

One of my favorite things to do when cooking over a fire is to cook vegetables directly in the coals, not wrapped in tinfoil or a leaf,  but just dropped right in the mix of the flame.

We have only begun to be able to work the outside area of the land and have not built our permanent fire pit yet so we made a fire in a metal fire pit someone gave us when we still lived in the city.

The first thing to do is to build a base that will provide you with alot of coals and still keep the fire going.  Move aside a pile of coals near the flames but big enough that the vegetables can lay flat and get good contact with the heat.

I’m not sure that every vegetable would be appropriate for this sort of cooking, I used an eggplant, zucchini, a red pepper and two jalapenos.  The skin is going to get very charred so it would be best to use vegetables that have some sort of outer covering that can be scraped off.

Lay the veg directly on the coal and turn as each side is charred,  make sure it is pitch colored before removing it.  Place the veg under a bowl and let it cool there to help cook it all the way through.

With a pairing knife begin peeling or scraping blackened skin off the vegetable.  You will not be able to get every little fleck so don’t try. 

 I then chopped them up and added fresh rosemary, a little butter and olive oil and a touch of yogurt and salt.   Voila, we had our smokey side to accompany our steaks.   I used the leftovers in a hummus I made the next day for lunch and in the past I have added the roasted vegetables to soups.  Mmmmmm!