Roasting the Harvest

Here in the shady suburbs, we have a small garden patch out by the street -- a raised bed on one end -- just enough room for tomato plants. It's always so difficult to temper my springtime tomato buying. This year we have two Green Zebra and one each of Sweet Million, Fantastic, Superfantastic, Principe Borghese, Juliet and Roma.


The Sweet Million plant is over 6 ft tall now, some of the others nearly so.




Juliet has lovely grape tomatoes all lined up on a stem.

It seemed forever for any of the tomatoes to ripen. . . . but suddenly we seem to have ripe tomatoes on all plants all at once.

And just when I needed it, I've two methods of oven roasting tomatoes. This one, from Smitten Kitchen blog, I tried today with the Juliet tomatoes. Some are now diced up and put over a mini farfalle pasta , sprinkled with parmesan. Delicious!




The second method roasts the tomatoes a bit longer and slower, resulting in an oven-dried tomato. This recipe is in the Chicago Botanic Garden newsletter, coming from the owner of The Rustic Kitchen in Chicago:

Oven-dried Tomatoes

Slice six large tomatoes or halve smaller ones and arrange in one layer on a large baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, as well as thyme or rosemary, if you like. Place in a 200-degree oven for about eight hours.

Let cool, then transfer to plastic containers and freeze.

Enjoy all winter in salads, sauces, sandwiches, and flatbreads.

For delicious infused olive oil, add enough oil to cover the tomatoes to drizzle on salads or to finish off pasta or risotto.

I intend to try this one tomorrow. Yum! Tomatoes tonight, tomorrow, and in the winter, too.