Tuesday’s Cooking Tip #3 – Roasting Tomatoes

I started 3 weeks ago, conquering and then sharing my small victories in the kitchen.  As a home chef, or should I say cook, I have no culinary training.  My learning is what I see on TV, read on-line or achieve through trial and error.  These posts are inspired by techniques I would like to master so that I can actually use the food in a recipe.  Pretty simple idea.

In my 3rd installment of Tuesday’s Cooking Tip (I have now named it), I wanted to roast tomatoes to make a light, homemade sauce for my pasta.  A week ago, I had made up a Mexican purée and vegetable combination that I added to my orzo by roasting peppers and caramelizing tomatillos and onions.  This gave me the idea to roast some tomatoes and add it to onions and then throw it on a pasta.

Roasting tomatoes is quite easy.  Best of all, the skin comes off real easy when the roasting is done.  Now I am sure there is more than one way to roast tomatoes but with winter approaching here in the Midwest, learning more tricks with my oven is useful.  I do want to acknowledge that I googled the concept and read some posts so I would have a general idea what to expect.  I encourage my readers to google questions because you will find great answers from my fellow bloggers as well as traditional food sites like the Food Network.

 

Ingredients:

• 6 whole tomatoes (like beefsteak)
• 3 cloves of garlic, cut into slivers
• 2 – 3 tbsp olive oil
• Salt & pepper to taste

 

Directions:

Cut the tomatoes in 1/2 horizontally.  Meanwhile, pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.  On a baking sheet, place the tomatoes cut side down.  Add the garlic slivers intermixed with the tomatoes.  Pour over the olive oil and take your hands and make sure both sides of the tomatoes get coated.  Sprinkle with the salt and pepper and place the tomatoes back to cut side down.  Roast for close to 2 hours.  When you look in your oven the outer skin should be peeling away from the tomato.  The tomatoes will be tender after that much cooking time.  No need to wonder.  Remove from the oven and let cool.  Once the tomatoes are cool enough to handle, simply pull off the skin.  I left the stem on the 1/2 of the tomato while cooking.  That way, when I went to get ready to add them to my sauce pan, I knew exactly where to cut out the tough part of the tomato.  I hope you can put this methodology to work soon.  Enjoy!