Root Vegetable

Roasting concentrates the flavor of tomatoes in this light, refreshing, easy-to-make soup. It’s irresistible either hot or cold.

This thick and creamy soup gains a rich flavor when the potatoes are roasted in a bit of bacon fat.

Cooking the onions for this hearty soup requires less tending in the convection oven than in a saucepan and the aroma is just as wonderful!

This updated classic soup of Mexico is easier to make when you let the convection oven do the cooking. Add a squeeze of fresh lime juice to each bowl when you serve it.

Roasting brings out the sweetness of vegetables and intensifies their fresh flavors. Vary the vegetables if you wish, but follow this general pattern: Roast the vegetables, remove skins if necessary, puree, and flavor the puree with fresh herbs or garlic. Serve over hot pasta or use as a sauce for lasagna.

Eggplant, zucchini, sweet onions, and tomatoes all roasted together thicken by themselves to make a deeply flavored sauce for pasta. It’s a meal that’s ready in less than half an hour.

Onions, sliced and cooked in the convection oven, literally melt into sweetness. Here the melted onions are baked in a rich custard, flavored with Parmesan, and cradled in a flaky pastry. This is terrific for a special occasion.

Roasted garlic becomes sweet, losing the sharp pungency that makes raw garlic so powerful. You can spread roasted garlic like butter on bread or vegetables. Add it to soups, sauces, and dressings, or smear it onto a pizza. You can roast a number of whole heads at one time.

For pizza lovers, here are eight varieties to choose from. The basic dough makes two pizzas. The dough is easy to mix in the food processor.

This focaccia adds onions, olives, and dried tomatoes to the top. Cut into bite-sized pieces, it’s a great appetizer. The dough mixes most easily in a food processor.

If you make this ahead of time, keep it refrigerated but bring it to room temperature before serving.

Keep this sauce over a candle-warmer for the best flavor, but you can assemble the ingredients hours ahead. You can find anchovy paste in the gourmet section of most supermarkets. Otherwise, substitute half a tin of anchovy fillets, mashed.

The convection oven makes easy work of this recipe. While you roast the potatoes, cook the bacon in the convection oven. This leaves your cooktop splatter free.

This is a perfect accompaniment to an autumn meal of roast pork or chicken. You’ll use two oven racks for this recipe. To serve as a vegetarian main course, serve sautéed greens and steamed, herbed wild rice on the side.

This old favorite is a quick snack or accompaniment to a simple soup and salad meal. You can get the bread ready for roasting as the oven preheats. In the summer, I like to serve slices of toasted bread with a topping of chopped or thinly sliced fresh tomatoes from the garden.

Juicy pork chops, smothered with slowly cooked onions and topped with melted cheese, are certain to make mouths water. You can prepare these in advance—browning the chops and cooking the onions—then complete the skillet cooking and baking as your guests are seated. Thick chops from the pork loin are my favorite, and the ones used in the recipe. Leaner rib chops will work as well but should be cooked a few minutes less.

In these days when the choice of chicken dishes seems limited to variations of grilled chicken breast, this recipe is a refreshing departure. You butterfly (split open) a whole chicken, fill it with a savory stuffing, close the bird up again, and pan-roast it in a cast-iron skillet, creating a wonderful sauce at the same time. It is beautiful and bursting with flavor. And though the chicken is plump, the dish is light and fresh-tasting.