The Oven-Roasted Facelift
This week's recipe isn't just delicious, good for you, and helpful for losing weight: it could send your wrinkles packing too.
The Diva is very excited: she’s discovered that eating yellow, orange and red fruit and veg gets rid of wrinkles. The Diva is not in favour of wrinkles, very keen on eating, and an avid listener to Michael Mosely’s series on Radio 4 about how to stay young.
‘We have to tell people they can throw away their Botox, micro-needles and fillers, and eat loads of carrots, pumpkins and tomatoes instead.*
*Also red and yellow peppers, mangos, melons and anything else you can think of, including dark leafy green veg, which for obvious reasons is not orange, and eggs, which are not veg.
I point out that not everyone is up to their ears in facelifts, and besides, this newsletter is about making delicious food that just happens to be good for losing weight, not the latest scientific reasons to eat more plants. .
But she was adamant that it was something people needed to know.
‘Not everyone listens to Radio 4 you know.’
Hard to believe, but she might be right.
I told her it could turn out to be yet another unfounded food health claim.
‘But it was on Radio 4 – and anyway, if it does, it’s still good for them in lots of other ways and it’s delicious whether it’s good for you or not.
I told her I’d get onto it soon, but this week I was planning to write about grapes and a brilliant Sicilian way of using them with saffron and cauliflower – I’d bought the saffron already when I was at the Cento Gusti food fair in Anghiari and a mountain* of Italia muscat grapes at Sansepolcro market.
*Mountain has rather shrunk, as I can’t stop eating them.
‘But we have to tell people immediately – what if they met the love of their life this weekend and they weren’t looking their best – their whole life ruined because we hadn’t told them to eat more pumpkin’.
I tried telling her that it took more than a few days for it to work their magic, but she’s incapable of applying herself to scientific detail when there’s a bit of melodrama to be squeezed out of something.
But she is right: people who eat more veg tend to have have fewer wrinkles and plumper skin – and to get technical for a very short moment, all the reds, oranges and yellows are full of carotenoids, which give you more collagen and can trigger skin cells into producing hyaluronic acid, the must-have ingredient in all the best face creams (allegedly). And to make matters better, they are good for getting rid of the wrinkles you have, and the the ones that are lying in wait.
The suggestion is that we eat at least some every day, which you are probably doing already if you eat a lot of veg – but here is a wrinkle-busting roast to add to your Sunday lunch, or eat with an omelette or some beans (butterbeans would go particularly well), or perhaps some wholegrain barley. For a very low-calorie-dense meal you could add some fillets of cod for the last 10 minutes, and serve with some beluga black lentils.
However you eat it, it’s as good a proof as any that you don’t have to suffer to be healthy (and look fabulous).
Roast pumpkin, cherry tomatoes, carrots, red pepper, red onion, and rosemary.
Quantities can be approximate, but don’t overdo the tomatoes or it becomes too acidic.
Serves 2
200g pumpkin
A handful of cherry tomatoes
Half a red pepper
A medium red onion
One large carrot
A few sprigs of rosemary
3 teaspoons olive oil
Salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 200°/180°fan/400°f/gas mark 6
Peel and chop the pumpkin into smallish chunks.
Peel the carrot and cut into batons
Peel the onion and cut into 1cm chunks
Put in a bowl and season well.
Halve the tomatoes and cut the peppers into strips.
Put in a different bowl and season well.
Add to the pumpkin, carrot and onion.
Add the olive oil and mix really well with your hands – that way you can coat the veg really well with a very small amount of oil.
Roast in the oven for 40 – 60 minutes – until they are browned and caramelised – turning over halfway through.
Diva Notes
I season the tomatoes and peppers separately because, depending on the tomatoes, they may need a different amount of salt from the carrots and pumpkin. If you are in a hurry, do it all together.
About The Diva
If you are new to this newsletter, you may not have met the Diva yet. She is a creature of uncertain appearance, very certain opinions, and a great many tiaras. She turned up one day when I was trying to write a Christmas round-robin – she considered I was making a very dull job of it, and took over. Since then she has shared my laptop – although the word share implies something rather more democratic than is the case. I have tried putting my foot down, but she is remarkably persistent in her determination to share her opinions with the world. And aside from her gargantuan sense of her own importance, she does know her onions where cooking is concerned.