Monday, October 4, 2010

The smell of fall, in the kitchen

I am a firm believer that you can never ever have too many tomatoes. If a neighbor, relative, coworker has extras I’ll take every single one, and this is why…Slow roasting in the oven. The roasting process fills your home with a wonderful smell that I can’t help but associate with fall, since I only roast tomatoes this time of the year. And the taste of the finished product is so rich and complex, and it’s so easy to do.
Simply cut a thin slice off the top and bottom of the tomato (you don’t want any skin on either side, it gets in the way of the juices escaping) and then cut the tomato into a few thick slices, nothing less than ¼.” Then sprinkle a little pepper and a pinch of rosemary or basil on top. This time I used a garlic pepper blend and fresh basil. Anything that you have will work, just do not use salt! Then roast at 225 degrees for about 3 hours.
The “about 3 hours” part is important. Each time it’s different and you want to keep an eye on them. Don’t answer the phone and then start painting your toenails while in a long conversation with a friend or else you might end up with this:
Not the desired result! This is more like it…
In this case one pan was full of smaller tomatoes and it ended up being pushed further to the back of the oven which is hotter. I should have checked on them and rotated the pans. Luckily the other two pans turned out perfect.
These delicious morsels will keep in the refrigerator as long as it takes you to use them. In my case that’s never more than a week (if you’ve got wax paper it’s great between layers). Since we had a bit of warm sunny weather here in Portland last week it seems the tomatoes have finally decided to ripen, if you are lucky enough to have a few extra tomatoes give this a try, you will not be disappointed!

8 comments:

  1. We are doing the same here but only with small tomatoes. To keep them a long time we put them in olive oil.

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  2. oh my this was a surprise in the danger garden blog! But good info, I hope I have enough tomatoes for this next year :)

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  3. Great idea, Loree. I bet you can do this with cherry tomatoes too, can't you? I've got a bunch just ripening. A few more days of sunshine would be nice.

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  4. We do that too....and then run them through the blender and make tomato soup!

    Wyatt

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  5. so...how do you eat them? on a cracker with a cheese of some sort? I just picked a TON from neighbor Ron's yard (he's on a hunting trip) and need to do something with them! Luckily my Mom told me about your post! How perfect! :)

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  6. jp, I've heard of that method but never tried it. Perhaps next year!

    Mary C, yes I went a little off topic but they are just so good that I had to share!

    Grace, yep according to jp you should do it!

    Wyatt, omg that sounds good! I think I'll need more to be able to do that thought.

    Andrea, yes as you describe is a fav, but also on homemade pizza, and they are great on sandwiches and wraps too!

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  7. Li'l Ned, I don't see why not, go for it!

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