Pass the pomodoro!

Ever since I started growing (and obsessing over) tomatoes on my back porch, few things make me as happy as the perfect tomato.  Doesn’t this one look amazing?

Unfortunately, I cannot take credit for this one, but it does provide me with some inspiration for my little plant.  My favorite thing about tomatoes is that there is so much you can do with them.  I picked these ones up at the market a few days ago and had so much fun roasting them in the oven.  They look so fresh!

In order to roast them, here’s what I did.  Cut them in half and line them up on a cookie pan (I used parchment paper) as shown above.  Drizzle some olive oil and add a few unpeeled garlic cloves (about 3-4) like so:

You then put them in the oven at 200 degrees F for 2.5 to 3 hours.

When you take them out, they should look like this:

From there, you can enjoy them on their own or throw them into your favorite pasta or onto your favorite pizza!  Here’s what I did with them:

Rosée Salmon Pasta

Though I cheated a bit in the preparation of this meal, I still thought it was worth sharing because 1) it was DE-LISH and 2) it was a little bit of an experiment with smoked salmon.  My father-in-law accidentally bought 4 packs of smoked salmon -thinking they were fillets  (the result of his shopping without his glasses) – and so one of those packs got donated to us. Since I’m not a fan of smoked salmon, I decided to experiment with cooking it – and it worked out well!

I sautéed the salmon in grape seed oil with garlic, onions, salt and pepper and little bit of white wine vinegar …

…then simply cooked up some pasta and threw in a bottle of rosée – and voilà! Smoked salmon for a girl who does not like smoked salmon!

Since this is a pretty heavy meal – I served with a very simple salad: lettuce + tomatoes with grape seed oil (for lack of olive oil) and red wine vinegar