Appetizers · By Sharon
Mom's Oven-Roasted Tomatoes
Just as Gerd's tapenade has become a mainstay of our appetizer trays, so too these tomatoes — they are an amazing combination of caramelized sweetness and bright acidity! Coming home from Ottawa in the fall of 2024 we had a bunch of tomatoes left over from the harvest which were in the cellar. I decided to do sundried, or in this case oven-dried, tomatoes, since they were already a bit wizened. The sweet results were so good that we wanted more. A little later that fall Costco began carrying a mid-sized sweet tomato from our Marble-Go Greenhouse, like the flavorful Campari tomatoes but a little bigger. We've rarely been without a container of these in the fridge since then. The Herbs-de-Provence which lend a distinctive herbiness to these tomatoes have been a go-to since our French trip with Joc in 2010, where we came to appreciate the lavender in this herb blend, and gloried in the huge fields of lavender everywhere in Provence. One of the best Herbs-de-Provence blends we have had is from Prince Edward County in Ontario where they too have glorious purple fields of lavender; we're going there this summer (2025) to be with our family by the lake, and we'll be stocking up.
Ingredients
- Juicy midsize tomatoes (Avalantino are available in Costco, Med Hat, but any sweet juicy midsize tomato, like Campari, will be great)
- Herbs de Provence (with lavender)
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Salt and pepper
Method
- 1
Wash as many tomatoes as you can fit on your baking sheet(s), and halve them.
- 2
Place them skin side down on parchment paper in your baking tray.
- 3
Sprinkle generously with olive oil (don't skimp on it), Herbs de Provence, some salt and pepper.
- 4
Bake at 350°F (convection) for 15 minutes, then turn down to 300°F and continue baking for 45 minutes to an hour (perhaps more).
- 5
You are looking for the tomato sugars to be caramelizing, with the juices on the parchment often blackening by the time the tomatoes have begun to caramelize sufficiently. You don't want them totally dried out, just the sugary juices caramelizing. You also don't want them too juicy, or their flavor is not sufficiently concentrated.
- 6
Once cooled, place in container with lid, using paper towel as dividers between the layers (absorbs any oozing juice). These will freeze very well.
A note from Sharon
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