Pan-roasted parsnip salad with honey and mustard dressing

If I were a vegetarian, I'd eat parsnips all the time. Fortunately I'm not, but still, I love parsnips. So do you.

I always hated parsnips at school (the dinner ladies used to cut them up so that they looked like chips!) but as I've grown up a bit I've started liking them. This nice, simple salad will serve four people.

Salad ingredients:
4 parsnips
4 tomatoes, preferably on the vine
1 large lettuce
2 garlic cloves
2 tbsps olive oil
A few rosemary sprigs
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Honey and mustard dressing ingredients:
2 garlic cloves
2 tbsps wholegrain mustard
3 tbsps runny honey
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
2 tbsps extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method:

1. Start off by making the dressing. Crush the garlic cloves and mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl. NOTE: I can't remember the exact quantities I used for my dressing as I was playing around with a recipe I found somewhere else, so it might be an idea to check out another recipe for that and then play around with the quantities to see how it tastes. This should keep for ages in the fridge.

2. Top and tail the parsnips, peel them, cut them into quarters lengthways and put them in a pan of cold, slightly salted water. Bring it to the boil and simmer briskly for 3-5 minutes, then put them back on the ring for a minute to let the moisture evaporate as you would with potatoes.

3. Heat the olive oil in a non-stick frying pan on a medium -high heat. Crush the garlic cloves and put them in the oil for about 30 seconds to allow them to infuse, then put the parsnips in. Pick bunches of leaves off the rosemary sprigs and scatter them over the parsnips. Season them and roast them for a couple of minutes on each side until they're golden brown.

4. Chop up the lettuce leaves and tomatoes in whatever way you wish and serve in a salad bowl with the parsnips on top and the dressing in a bowl on the side.