"RoastedTomatoes" news and stories

Few of us want to make a complicated lasagna for solo dining -- by day six, you'll never want to see lasagna again! In this series, AOL Food staffer Sarah LeTrent taste-tests simple recipes suitable for a "table for one."

The time-honored Italian dish, saltimbocca, traditionally calls for veal cutlets, but the classic is easier and more practical for singletons to make with commonplace chicken breasts.

Saltimbocca, roughly translated, means to "jump into your mouth" -- and with thin slices of chicken wrapped in savory prosciutto and autumn sage, the translation seems fitting. Paired with roasted tomatoes on the vine, this 10-minute, one-pot meal yearns for a table under the Tuscan sun. In a concrete jungle, fresh sunflowers will have to suffice.

The beauty of this variation is that everything is cooked in the oven, at one temperature, in one pan. After all, when it's just one person doing the cooking, that same person has to do the cleaning too.

Roasted Tomatoes. Photo: maggiephotos, Flickr.

Fall is officially here, but that doesn't mean you can't still snag a few good tomatoes here and there. While they're best fresh, tomatoes can also survive a stint in the freezer ... as long as you do something with them afterward.

These scarlet slices are from Flickr user maggiephotos -- who encourages freezing the ruby reds for colder months -- and explains on her blog Pithy and Clever that she roasted them with herbs, salt and "a few cloves of garlic." Roasted low and slow, they managed to maintain their beautiful color and look just as lush as fresh tomatoes.

[Via Flickr]

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Tomato confit. Photo: Jennifer Iserloh.

Here's a little restaurant technique to make the rich, sweet, tangy, roasted tomatoes that many restaurants use to add a flavor and dimension to various dishes.

I like them best with pasta and although they do take time to cook, they are well worth the wait.

Making tomato confit isn't hard but it can heat up the house and seem wasteful to run the oven for hours -- so why not use an energy-saving toaster oven?

I'm on vacation this week, traveling around Southern California visiting family (with a stop in Las Vegas over the weekend). When I was getting ready to leave, in addition to packing and cleaning the apartment a bit so that I didn't return to a total mess, I also had to make sure to use up any food that wasn't going to keep while we were away. I did a final, abbreviated grocery shop last Sunday and then set out to create meals that used only what I had (actually, not much of a challenge given the stocked state of my kitchen).

I made scrambled eggs and toast one night and another did hamburgers with a random veggie medley along side. I also roasted a huge sheet pan of tomatoes, as I had been given a bounty by a friend's mother. I used half of them in a baked pasta dish and then poured what remained into a quart-sized container for the freezer.

This time of year, with the tomatoes as gorgeous and abundant as they are, it's a wonderful thing to tuck some away for future use. The food blogs have been abuzz lately with news of people canning and preserving those tomatoes. If the idea of jars, large pots and hot water baths give you the shakes, just remember your freezer. My roasted tomatoes were simply tomato wedges spread out on a rimmed cookie sheet, drizzle with olive oil and seasoned with a bit of salt and pepper. Baked for 45 minutes at 375 degrees, they were wonderful with the pasta and sauteed veggies I tossed them with, and they'll be even better when I pull the rest of the freezer in a few months.

There were amazing tomatoes everywhere I turned today while strolling the Sunday Headhouse Square Farmers Market. I picked up a huge heirloom 'mater, and ogled many others. This picture, from Renata Damasio, is a great example of one way to use the abundance of tomatoes that are now ripe (although I must admit that rarely get tired of eating them raw, sliced and with a sprinkle of salt). However, when your fingers start to pucker from the acid, stuffing and roasting them is a terrific way to incorporate a little variety.

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