A massive thanks to Sarah Britton of My New Roots for the inspiration for this festive recipe! Gone are the days of bland British vegetables! We love adding Middle Eastern flavours wherever we can and it was Ottolenghi who first properly introduced us to all the possibilities of herbs, spices and sauces that have helped transform vegetables that often have a boring reputation or are seen as underdogs. We would include parsnips in this category. Quite often, these wonderful root vegetables are only seen at a Sunday roast or at Christmas and can be lack lustre or too predictable- is anyone bored of maple or honey glazed parsnips yet?!

With this delicious dish we think you'll want to start using parsnips a whole lot more. Once again Za'atar is the magical ingredient used here to really elevate the parsnips. Pomegranate molasses and juice pomegranate seeds help to enhance and bring out the natural sweetness of the parsnips. 

We encourage you to spice up your Christmas and holiday cooking this year and don't just stick to tradition! There's a world of interesting and untapped flavour combinations out there that will inspire you to approach your vegetables in an entirely new way and make eating more of them a pleasure rather than a chore.

And now for the recipe!

Roasted Parsnips with Pomegranate Glaze & Za'atar