With the heat wave we've been having in Boston, our tomatoes have been busting out all over. I've read a lot about the MIRACLE of slow-roasted tomatoes but thought it was just one of those trendy things designed to make you use your oven for 90 minutes so that you feel like you've done something amazing. Well, it turns out that may be true, and they really are amazingly flavorful and it can work miracles even on tomatoes that are underripe OR a bit (A BIT) past their prime (e.g. NOT ROTTEN, just overripe). I took inspiration from Deb Perelman's Roasted Tomato Picnic Sandwich from Smitten Kitchen Every Day (p. 107), but unlike that, which is really a RECIPE and involves baking pizza dough, this is a lot more akin to one of those recipes Antoni shares on Queer Eye . Now, I mean NO SHADE here--when you are trying to get a person who can barely maintain the rudiments of personal hygiene to cook for their significant other, you don't have them try their hand at chicken
On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And thro' the field the road runs by To many-tower'd Camelot; And up and down the people go, Gazing in the oven low, Round a kitchen island there below, The kitchen of Shallot. (With apologies to Tennyson)