Heavenly Oven-Roasted Tomatoes

One of my FAVORITE culinary expressions is a Korean one:  “둘이먹다 하나 죽어도 모른다.”  It means that something tastes so good— SO DIVINE — that even if the person next to you were to drop dead, you wouldn’t notice!

Let me tell you, these oven-roasted tomatoes certainly qualify. They are so heavenly that I have to exercise extreme willpower not to eat every single one of these babies straight out of the oven. Something truly magical happens as the sugars in the tomatoes caramelizes and melds with Italian herbs, garlic and olive oil.

RECIPE:

• tomatoes, stems removed, seeded and quartered
• olive oil
• Italian seasoning (or whatever herbs you have on hand: basil, marjoram, oregano, rosemary, thyme)
• salt and freshly cracked pepper
• garlic, sliced (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 325ºF (165ºC.)
2. Line a baking pan with foil or parchment paper. (*Very important! The caramelization process leaves a bit of a mess, so do yourself a favor and line the pan. This will also help you save time if you do multiple batches. You can just reline the pan and pop in a new batch right away.)
3. Place tomato quarters into baking dish, skin side down.  (I used 8 tomatoes for a 13″x14″ pan)
4. Season tomatoes with salt, pepper and herbs.
5. Drizzle olive oil over tomatoes
6. For added flavor, place a slice or two of garlic on each tomato quarter
7. Bake for 2 to 2.5 hours, until tomatoes are nice and wilted.  (Your house will smell AWESOME!)

   

That’s it! Since tomatoes are really expensive in Korea, I buy them in bulk (20+lbs) and then bake several batches. I keep a couple containers in the fridge, and the rest in the freezer. For those of you lucky enough to have gardens, this is a great way to use up your summer’s bounty.

As I said before, these are SO yummy that it’s difficult not to gobble up the whole batch all at once! I absolutely love to have a few of these roasted babies on top of some toasted sourdough bread (the picture at the top features a delicious slice of sourdough from Fog City International Cafe). I can’t wait to discover new uses for them, like as a topping on homemade pizza, or tossed with pasta. The possibilities are endless! How would you eat them?