Roasted Tomatoes

It's a pretty simple idea: roast tomatoes, sliced, for a while until the water evaporates somewhat and the sugars concentrate. The tomatoes get buttery rich and shrunken, but not leathery like a sun-dried tomato. I've seen a few variations: Alton Brown does his with tomatoes cut in two, tossed with herbs and sugar and baked at 170 for 10 hours, I've seen a recipe for 250 for 3-4 hours. But this is the one that I've tried that I like the best:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Core and slice tomatoes. Place on parchment-lined baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, sliced garlic, kosher salt and pepper and bake 30-60 minutes until juices have evaporated. Store in plastic zip-top bag in fridge or freezer.

Pretty easy, but I've learned a few lessons from doing this a couple times already. I get my tomatoes from the farmer's market. They sell them here right now for really cheap for the less-than-perfect toms. I got 6lb for $5, and if I had gone up to 10 or 15 lbs it would have been even cheaper per pound. I've tried both romas and the big round tomatoes and I like the round ones better.

As for the parchment paper, I normally replace parchment with my silicon mats, but I think in this case it's better not to. The paper soaks up some of that liquid so it doesn't leak out all over my oven. Also, instead of a baking sheet, I think I'll try a glass or pyrex baking pan from now on, for the same reason (to keep the juices in) and that if you don't clean the metal baking sheet right away the acid will do un-good things to the metal. I think I will also skip the garlic from now on. It gets too bitter with all that baking. Or, maybe I'll toss a whole one in there with the paper still on so that the tomatoes get the aromatics, but the garlic doesn't burn. Hmm...

The first time I did it, I has some problems with some pieces shriveling and charring while other pieces were still juicy. I thought if I cut the pieces with a mandolin that would keep everything even, but the tomatoes were too ripe for that. So I just tried really really hard to make them all the same size, and I put the thicker pieces on the edges and the thinner pieces in the middle. That helped a lot. I think it's better to undercook than overcook these, as the charred tomatoes aren't very good at all.

After I roasted them, I cooled the pans on the counter and then put them in the freezer. When the tomatoes were frozen I picked them off the pan and put them in a bag. I think if you wanted you could just put the unfrozen pieces in a bag and freeze them like that: after all, you're probably going to use the whole bag at once, right? not piece by piece? I might do that in the future, the frozen tomatoes were not easy to peel off the sheets.

I kept a batch unfrozen yesterday and saved it for dinner. We just tossed them in some pasta with some olive oil and mixed it up to sort of mash the tomatoes. It was really sweet and velvety. I loved it, and even Chris liked it even though he doesn't normally like sweet food. Anyway, I plan on putting some up every week until the tomatoes stop being cheap, and that way we can have some during the long, cold winter. You could also use them for pizza or bruschetta or as a side dish.