Farmer's Market Friday: Cherry Tomatoes

Still looking for inventive ways to use the season's bumper crop of tomatoes? After reading the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, which chronicles a Virginia family's quest to eat only seasonal, locally available foods for one calendar year, I have been inspired to preserve some of summer's vegetable bounty for the lean winter months. I'm not big on "traditional" canning because I have a small apartment kitchen that is ill-equipped for this type of undertaking and generally only need to feed one, but other methods of food preservation are appealing to me. One of the best ways I have found to capture some of the vegetable overflow is to slow roast tomatoes, an incredibly simple process. Once roasted, the tomatoes can be kept in a jar in the fridge, covered in a thin layer of olive oil, for several months. I plan on using them in place of store-bought sun dried tomatoes to pump up salads and as an addition to pizza or pasta. I can also vouch that they are pretty darn delicious right out of the oven. After smelling these tasty treats roasting for two hours, I bet you'll have a hard time saving them all for January too...

Slow Roasted Tomatoes

Preheat over to 300 degrees. Slice cherry tomatoes in half and place, cut side up, on a rimmed cookie sheet covered in aluminum foil. Drizzle with olive oil, sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Toss to coat. Roast the tomatoes for until their skin becomes dark and wrinkly, about two hours. Serve immediately on their own, or save for future use in any recipe calling for sun dried tomatoes.

(Additional tomato goodness here and here.)