Meatless Monday: Oven-Roasted Tomatoes

Meatless Monday: Oven-Roasted Tomatoes

Last week I wrote about ways to use up your green tomatoes, including seasonal favorites such as fried green tomatoes. I also included instructions for ripening tomatoes indoors in paper bags. This week, I had a sufficient number of paper-bag-ripened tomatoes that I needed to use them or lose them. One of my favorite preparations is to slow roast my indoor-ripened tomatoes in the oven. Roasting concentrates the flavor making even your palest, least flavorful raw tomatoes into a rather intense condiment. There are lots of ways to use roasted tomatoes. I like to cook them in a saucepan with some unroasted tomatoes, onions and herbs to make a flavorful sauce. I also like to freeze 1-cup servings of roasted tomatoes in plastic bags to add to soups and stews throughout the winter. One warning: Slow roasting tomatoes will fill your house with such a luscious, savory aroma that you’ll be hungry all day.

How to Roast Tomatoes:

4-6 pounds fresh tomatoes 6 or more whole cloves garlic olive oil sprigs of thyme salt and freshly ground pepper

• • Preheat oven to 350°.
• • Line a 12 x 17 cookie sheet or 9 x 13 baking pan (or both if needed) with parchment paper.
• • Cut tomatoes in half lengthwise. There’s no need to remove the stem end unless it’s especially large and woody.
• • Place tomatoes, cut sides up, on your cookie sheet. You can place them very close together if need be.
• • Tuck whole cloves of garlic in between the tomatoes.
• • Drizzle tomatoes with a little olive oil
• • Dust with salt and a little pepper
• • Place thyme sprigs on top

Bake for 2-3 hours, until collapsed.