I often write about the pleasure I get from cooking when I'm just trying to clean out the fridge, but I had to tell you now about a fantastic vegetable bake I made the other day. I never would have thought of cooking aubergine and sweet potatoes together but I had some ravishing graffiti aubergines (eggplant to those in the US) which were on the wane, ditto the sweet spuds, and a bowlful of cherry tomatoes. So I bunged them all, in bite size pieces, into an oven tray with some garlic oil and fresh thyme (the few straggly bits left in my winter-assaulted garden) and roasted them until sweet and soft.
And the wonderful thing about this is not just that it tastes gorgeous, but that I get such as sense of calm, blissful satisfaction from cooking without shopping and from salvaging stuff from having to be thrown away. Highly recommended. By which I mean not that you should copy this recipe (such as it is) but try out any permutation of roast vegetable platters depending on what has been lingering in your fridge just begging to be cooked.
