Hi there! I volunteered to make a roast vegetable tray for our office potluck tomorrow. The plan is just to have a bunch of beautiful roasted veggies that I’ll serve room temp. I’d love to have some kind of sauce to dip or drizzle. Something creamy like an aioli or maybe an herb sauce…thoughts?
I wonder if April Bloomfield’s lemon-caper dressing wouldn’t work well - it’s very assertive in flavor.
Or a green goddess dip?
Since they’ll be roasted and therefore on the soft side, I wouldn’t do anything too thick - it will be impossible to dip up. A creamy sauce of salad dressing consistency would be nice, though - garlic buttermilk something? I also love green herb sauces with grilled vegetables - I make an easy one: one bunch of cilantro, one bunch of parsley, one clove of garlic, a few green onions, one fresh jalapeno and a few green olives go in a blender with a couple of tablespoons of vinegar and a tablespoon of mayo. Whiz until smooth and season to taste.
I’m way behind in my planning for a cocktail party I’m hosting Sunday. I plan to do a roasted vegetable patter with aioli. I saw some beautiful pics of platters where the veggies were placed on whole curly kale leaves. I’m having a hard time deciding on what veggies to use. Can you offer ideas?
Which vegetables are you roasting, and are you roasting them in any particular fat or with any particular herbs?
I haven’t purchased the vegetables yet and I’m letting the grocery store dictate that to me. I’d like some red peppers, zucchini/squash, broccoli, red onion, whole baby carrots, mushrooms…
Seasoning and fat will be minimal and basic because I have a few “unadventurous” people here. For seasoning, I’ll probably make something similar to a Montreal spice blend - salt, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder. Fat will be olive oil.
That lemon caper dressing sounds incredible! I’m a sucker for anything with capers.
Certainly wise to be collecting ideas in advance, but I think until you know what vegetables people will be eating, you can’t really know what dressing would complement their flavors. (i.e., lemon and capers is not what I would put on mushrooms, but others might feel differently).
If[quote=“KrisRishere, post:6, topic:2631”]
Fat will be olive oil.
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Then I would recommend an olive oil based dressing.
You can achieve the same effects as garlic powder by cutting slices of raw garlic or onion into a glass of olive oil and letting it sit for a while. You can add the salt in the glass too. Just taste it occasionally to see how strong the garlic flavor is getting. Garlic-infused oil is usually more perfumey than added-in garlic powder, which can leave a sharper undertone.
For me, if there was onion being roasted and served with all the other vegetables in the same pan, I’m not sure I would want additional onion flavor in the seasoning. Onion is pretty strong, and its fumes penetrate other foods just by being in the vicinity. If you have unadventurous eaters, you could just roast cloves of garlic along with the vegetables and let the adventurous have the thrill of roasted garlic cloves while the unadventurous could avoid them entirely, and leave the seasoning at just good old salt and pepper. If your vegetables are seasonal/quality, they should become highly flavorful with roasting and not need other flavors. I think the danger with an assertive sauce is that you go to all the trouble of roasting the variety of flavorful vegetables, and then they all ended up tasting like the sauce.
It’s amazing.
Mushrooms are a vegetable? Who knew!
KrisRishere,
Another thought: If the trip to the grocery store dictates mostly winter vegetables, or root vegetables, or you pick up great mushroosms, then consider a walnut pesto or some kind of walnut dressing. Lots of recipes online.
Don’t get your point. The OP is considering including mushrooms in what has been discussed from the first post as roasted vegetables. As in:
Aí. Guess I overlooked that.
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Thought maybe that had happened, but wasn’t sure.
Brussels sprouts can be nice in roasted vegetable platters. (Good with walnuts too)
Hee. I needed that! 
I make a dish of roasted brussels sprouts with a romesco sauce to dip.
What did you end up doing?
I agree with HolyTerroir that the flavor of the roasted vegetables should not be buried by an overly-assertive sauce. For that reason, I’d go with using whatever sauce is decided upon as a dip rather than a drizzle. Another plus to dip as opposed to sauce is that you can offer a choice of dips. Also, less drippy if the guest can control the amount. But I find raw garlic, even if only used to infuse oil, a lot sharper than garlic powder.
I’d roast large cloves of garlic, probably not on the same pan as the onions and other veg. I love roast garlic but not everyone does. Buttercup squash, a.k.a. kabocha, would be on my list, along with Brussels sprouts and wedges of sweet potato.
I recently used Stonewall Kitchen Roast Apple Grill Sauce, which contains garlic and mustard, among other seasonings. It’s scrumptious. I’d use it as a roast veg dip, perhaps adding a little balsamic for zing.
Do you pull out the center greenish shoot? That reduces the zing.
Garlic is tricky. Depending on where it comes from and how old/young it is, it can be sharp or mild.
I’ve just never had any luck with garlic powder, especially if heated. It tastes fairly chemical to me. I’ve got a large clove sitting in a glass of olive oil as I type, with the oil on its way to making a simple tomato sauce for pasta.
Sorry for the late reply - I’ve been so busy with work and an upcoming vacation that my head is spinning! (if anyone has any food recs for the Puerto Rican island of Culebra, let me know 
)
I ended up making a gorgeous platter with roasted red peppers, zucchini, squash, broccoli and stem on baby carrots. I wanted to keep it simple since I knew there would be a ton of other food there. I had decided to make a green goddess dip to go along with the veggies, but my grocery store didn’t have half the stuff I needed for it, so I ended up completely winging it. I threw a whole bunch of parsley, chives, 1 clove of garlic, 1 anchovy, some lemon juice, a splash of red wine vinegar and some sour cream in my processor. It actually tasted pretty damn good and even better the next day. I received many compliments on that sauce! Score one for the team! 
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I’ve had some of the best results by just winging it.
Glad your veggies & sauce were a grand success 
