Slow-Roast Tomatoes

I'm going to be very sad when I have to return "I'm Just Here for the Food" to the local library on 10/09. Alton Brown's cooking is the polar opposite of mine. I'm more of a slap and dash and "oh look, that didn't work...." whereas, Alton is precise, scientific and "oh look, that's amazing, just like I knew it would be." Very smug of you Alton.

His "I'm Just Here for the Food" is more textbook than cookbook, and I'm delving in like a straight A student. I purchased a 1/2 bushel of local tomatoes without a plan. Fortunately, Alton provided me with his top secret Slow-Roast Tomatoes recipe. Luckily for me, the oven does most of the work.

Ingredients:

20 ripe tomatoes, halved crosswise

1/2 c. extra-virgin olive oil

3 TB sugar

2 TB mixed fresh herbs, including rosemary, thyme, sage, minced

1 TB kosher salt

1 TB freshly ground black pepper

You preheat the oven to 170 F (or as low as your oven goes). Place tomatoes halves closely together, cut side up on shallow baking pans, drizzle with out, sprinkle sugar, followed by herbs, then with salt/pepper.

Roast for a minimum of 10 hours.

Okay, sounds simple enough. I can cut tomatoes and sprinkle them. But the recipe didn't mention how big the tomatoes should be? Mine were BIG.

My gut instinct was to slice them crosswise in thirds rather than halves, but I stuck with the recipe. I snipped fresh sage and rosemary from my garden, minced and sprinkled away.

My oven only goes down to 170F, so that took the guesswork out of the equation. I put the tomatoes in the oven after dinner to let them roast overnight. In the morning, they didn't look done. But then again, I wasn't sure what they were supposed to look like. They still had loads of juiciness. After about 14 hours, I turned the oven off and went to the gym. When I came home, the inviting aroma of tomato and herbs filled the kitchen. Heavenly.

I packed up a large glass container for the fridge and stored the rest in quart freezer bags for the winter.

Are they good? Yes. Is it a great way to store summer's overflowing tomatoes? Definitely. But are they to die for? No. I'm going to keep looking at other slow-roasted tomato recipes to see if I can find a recipe that makes me weep. Perhaps that's a bit much to ask for a tomato, but I'm confident that it can deliver.

Jenn Maruska Designs made these with smaller tomatoes at 200F. They look delish!