Tomato Splits and Mock Apple Pie

If you were lucky enough to get red tomatoes this summer, you may now be faced with an overabundance of the critters, many with splits in their skins due to all the rain. Sauce is one option, but not always the best solution if your tomatoes aren’t the paste variety. I like to make a modified oven-dried variety using any kind of
tomato on hand, even the little cherries. Here’s how it goes:

• First preheat the oven to 325 degrees, then line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Cover this with a thin coating of olive oil. It will make it easier to get the tomatoes up after they’re roasted.

• Then cut the cherry tomatoes in half (use a serrated knife and cut along the splits to make things easier), and and slice the large tomatoes. Thick slices are best- 1/2” or more. If they’re too thin then they just disappear after cooking.

• Drizzle the tomatoes with olive oil, then sprinkle with salt and freshly ground pepper and some dried basil if you like. Roast them in the oven for about 25-30 minutes, checking on them occasionally. They may take longer if they are really watery.

What you will end up with are dark, caramelized nuggets of tomato-ness that are so good you might just eat them like candy right out of the oven (the cherry tomatoes particularly lend themselves to this practice). You can add sauteed garlic, julienned basil, fresh chopped Italian parsley and cubes of mozzarella or scoops of ricotta and serve this over hot pasta. The tomatoes are also good on slabs of toasted sourdough bread that have been rubbed with a cut garlic clove and then spread with goat cheese. They also freeze well.

As for all those green tomatoes still hanging around, I heard an apple pie recipe on the radio in which half the apples are really …you guessed it. It calls for regular apple pie spices, sugar, etc. Well, it certainly seems more plausible than that mock apple pie made from Ritz crackers. I never could figure out how you could make a cracker pie taste like apples.