Roasted Winter Vegetables with Silky Sunflower Seed Sauce

I love the dish Gado Gado!  If you are not familiar with it, it is a Indonesian composed vegetable salad with a silky peanut dressing.  It often has hard boiled eggs in addition to the large pile of veggies.  I make it in the summer when I am craving cool food, but when I had a bunch of veggies I wanted to use up the other day, I thought I would make a winter version!  First off I created my dressing.  However, I decided to forego the peanut butter and use sunflower seed butter instead.  Since I think it has a tahini like flavor, I flavored it with lemon juice and cumin to put a middle eastern spin on it.  It was delicious!  And in fact would be great on any other salad, especially one with nice crisp romaine.  For my veggies in this "winter gado gado", I decided that they should be warm, and roasted.  So I roasted some brussels sprouts, carrots, rutabagas, and sunckokes for the veggies, and decided to poach my eggs instead of hard boiling them.  The composed plates of the dish were beautiful with all of the colorful veggies, but more importantly they were delicious!  The intensified roasted flavor of all the crispy edged veggies in the silky savory sauce along with the perfectly poached eggs...it was comfort food!  Here is the recipe if you would like to expirience it for yourself!

Roasted Winter Vegetables with Silky Sunflower Seed Sauce and Poached Eggs

Serves 3

Dressing:

1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp sunflower seed butter

1/4 cup water

juice of 1 lemon

1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp cumin
1/8 tsp ground chipotle (or to taste)
3/4 tsp sea salt or to taste
freshly ground black pepper to taste

Veggies:
3 large carrots, thinly sliced on the bias

10 brussels sprouts, quartered
3 small rutabegas, thinly sliced
6 medium sunchokes, thinly sliced
olive oil

2 tsp vinegar

1 tsp sea salt
6 cups water
3 large organic eggs

1/4 cup sunflower seeds, toasted

In a bowl, whisk dressing ingredients together until smooth and set aside.  Preheat oven to 475 degrees and line 2 large sheet pans with foil.  Toss vegetables with just enough olive oil to coat, and spread out on pans.  Roast until starting to brown and crispy at the edges, about 15 minutes.  To poach eggs, heat water to a simmer in a medium saucepan with the vinegar and salt. Crack an egg into a ramakin. Stir water with a spoon to swirl, and carefully pour egg into it. Let cook for 3-4 minutes or preferred doneness, and remove with a slotted spoon to a paper towel lined plate. Repeat with other eggs.   When veggies are done roasting, sprinkle them with a little sea salt and freshly ground pepper, and divide them between the plates.  Drizzle the sauce over each, and place a poached egg on each plate.  Sprinkle with sunflower seeds and serve!