Roasted tomatoes

I recently read An Everlasting Meal, and oh I could just read this book endlessly. I learned about it from my cousin Jenny, who does food writing/photos in DC - often about Slavic food, like this one for Georgian Eggplant Rolls with Walnut-Garlic Filling.  She also has a lovely blog called Eat with Pleasure that I find captivating.

The book is not really a cookbook, except that it also is. Author and chef Tamar Adler really is just writing about all the glorious ways to enjoy food - and while reading it, one's confidence is bolstered to do so while cooking without recipes, with joy and ease. The chapters are titled things like: How to Boil Water, How to Teach an Egg to Fly, and How to be Tender. Throughout it all she talks about how to make the most out of every ingredient (save parsley stems, salvage herbs, etc), while also doing things like baking a surplus of root veggies on Sunday to then make all kinds of delicious things with them throughout the week. It's really beautifully written and I found it so fun and creative. For example, in How to Season a Salad:

Because a salad can be made of anything, make one of an ingredient about which you get excited, or of whatever looks most lively, or of whatever you have around already...Cold, roasted beets, sliced or cubed, drizzled with vinegar, and mixed with toasted nuts and olive oil are a wonderful salad. So is roasted broccoli, tossed with vinegared onions and a light smattering of dried chile. So are green beans, boiled until just cooked, cold and sliced thinly, tossed with peanuts and crisp scallions and rice wine vinegar and sesame oil. So is boiled cauliflower or potatoes already salted, drizzled with vinegar and oil, with a big handful of chopped olives and capers mixed in. Anything, cooked or raw, cut up a little, mixed firmly with acid, salt, and a little fat, laid carefully on a plate, or spooned nicely in a bowl, is a "salad." 

This recipe/post is not really anything from her book, but it is inspired by her writing. I have had a surplus of cherry tomatoes this season - which really, I love cherry tomatoes and can eat them on pretty much anything. Lately my favorite is a salad of cucumber, blanched green beans, cherry tomatoes and tuna salad. But still, there are only so many a person can physically consume each day. So some go in the freezer (do you know you can just freeze tomatoes? it means when you go to cook them later they will have the peel on, but I hardly notice that for the ease that is just popping them in a freezer bag), and some get cut in half and roasted.

These roasted tomatoes can then just live in a jar covered in olive oil in the fridge for many weeks, or put in the freezer too. These are absolutely delicious with buttery eggs in the morning - they cause me to swoon they are so good. They would also be great on pizza, in salad, pasta, with sauteed veggies, etc. And after the tomatoes are gone, the left over olive oil is herb and tomato infused, which makes it tasty for putting on any other veggies or salad.

Oven roasted cherry tomatoes
Cherry tomatoes (as many as you have) - cut in half
olive oil
herbs: basil and thyme are good
salt and pepper

Arrange your tomatoes halves on a cookie sheet and drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with herbs and salt and pepper. Bake at 250 degrees for 2-3 hours, depending on the done-ness you like and the size of your tomatoes. *You can do this with slices of larger tomatoes too.  I like mine to still be soft, but dehydrated and without much liquid left. Remove them from the oven when they look right to you, and let cool. Put in a jar and cover with olive oil (will last several weeks this way), or freeze the whole tray and then put the tomatoes in a freezer bag.

For the eggs: make scrambled eggs with extra butter - melt the butter in the pan first, and pour in your eggs (with a little cream added in). Cook them until they are just barely done, and then serve them with the tomatoes from the jar, gently laid on top. It is divine!