One of my obsessions has become to take tomatoes, cut them in half, tenderly anoint with salt, pepper, brown sugar and olive oil and then roast the hell out of them.
And with no shortage of variations on ’ways to roast’, there’s always the excuse of … one more way to try.
This time it’s overnight. The tomatoes are prepared in the same way and the oven heated to 220c. But when the tomatoes go in, the oven is turned off and left – DOOR UNOPENED – until the next morning.
Does it work – yes. If you resist opening the oven door. In the past I’ve been known not to be tempted to open my oven for years on end. But under strict instructions not to open it for 8 hours and I get a little twitch everytime I pass.
There is of course the danger of going the other way and forgetting, like friends who celebrated Christmas, escaped for a few weeks and came back to find a mute and mutant Orville in the oven where they’d left the turkey carcass on Christmas Day.
Avoid either of the above and come next morning, you’ll have a tray of juicy, roast tomatoes, just waiting to be breakfast.
Transfered to a glass dish and microwaved for 1 minute, they’ll make the perfect partner for scrambled eggs ( melt a knob of butter in a pan, add forked eggs, a generous dollop of creme fraiche and gently heat, conscientiously stirring, till the eggs delicately scramble).
Of course it would be nice served on toast. But you’d have to have bread in the house for that.
I knew there was something I’d forgotten !
