Roasted tomatoes – the sign of summer

Roasted tomatoesIf you do not get giddy with excitement around this time of year, you are just not from the South and I don’t know what to do with you. It’s tomato season. After an eight-month drought, those cheery cherry red orbs are back again.

The only tomatoes I eat from about late October to early July are from a can because they’re picked when they’re ripe. I won’t bore you with my rant about supermarket tomatoes. But in a nutshell, they are picked green by what amounts to slave migrant labor and blasted with chemicals to turn them red. It’s the vegetable (actually, tomatoes are a fruit) equivalent of adding sugar to almost every processed food. By the way, did you know Wheat Thins have sugar in them? My favorite cracker and now it’s on the banned list. Thank God Triscuits are still pure.

But I digress. So most Southerners go into tomato overload around this time of year. There’s always the obligatory first tomato sandwich of the year. The always popular caprese salad. And tomatoes just sliced, salt and peppered and served alongside Silver Queen corn and fried okra. The perfect summer vegetable plate. Add the cornbread, please.

But even we – the Peoples of the South – tire of tomatoes after a spell. So it’s then that I start roasting them, which concentrates their sweet flavor and turns them into something entirely different. Chop them up and add them to fresh pasta with butter and herbs. Sprinkle on a little freshly grated Parmesan. Yes. Roasted tomato and onion jam on toast points topped with bacon crumbles. Why thank you, I think I’ll have another. A roasted tomato slice on a burger? Add sauteed mushrooms and there’s so much umami on that bun that it can barely get through the door.

There’s no recipe really for roasted tomatoes. However many you have, just slice them and put them on a foil lined rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with a little sugar and add salt and pepper. That’s it. A couple hours in the oven and you are good to go. Summer.

Roasted Tomatoes
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
 
Ingredients
  • Vine-ripened tomatoes
  • Extra-virgin olive oil
  • Sugar
  • Salt and pepper
Instructions
  1. Slice the tomatoes in thick slices and place on a foil-lined cookie sheet with a rim. Drizzle liberally with extra-virgin olive oil. Sprinkle with a small amount of sugar. Salt and pepper to taste.
  2. Bake at 300 degrees for several hours or until tomatoes have shriveled and started to turn brown around the edges. Don’t throw away the olive oil! It’s now infused with tomato flavor and is wonderful as a pasta sauce with a little balsamic vinegar.
 

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