I don't make up my own dishes very often. Or when I do, it's throwing together whatever I can find and it's nothing to write home about. Tonight, however, I made the best thing we've eaten for a while- and I'd still say that even if we hadn't eaten scalloped potatoes made from a box and cupcakes made from a mix last week.
I read Molly Wiezenburg's A Homemade Life this weekend and she made me want to cook almost recipe in there. This book is so good; each chapter is like a short auto-biographical essay prefacing a recipe on the at the end of the chapter. I laughed, I cried. A good book should do that, I think. Otherwise, why are you wasting your time reading something that doesn't move you to some sort of emotional reaction? Anyways, about the food. I really wanted to make Molly's Slow-Roasted Tomatoes, but they take 6 hours in the oven and that would mean setting my alarm to get up at 1 am and turn off the oven. Plus, I wanted them now. I remembered a similar recipe in Barefoot Contessa's Back to Basics. That one is for roasted tomatoes that only take 25 minutes. Perfect. I followed that method, but not the recipe itself. Tomatoes done, I chopped up half of them, cooked some pasta, tossed it with some goat cheese and basil, and that was that. So good. Please make this now, and let me know in the comments if you loved it as much as us (yes, Tyler even liked a dish with goat cheese!).
ROASTED TOMATO AND GOAT CHEESE PASTA
Serves 2-3
- 1/2 Roasted Tomatoes recipe (recipe follows), chopped
- 350 g dried penne pasta
- 70 g goat cheese
- a handful finely grated Parmesan cheese
- ground black pepper, to taste
- 1/2 cup reserved pasta water
- 2 tbsp chopped fresh basil
Cook pasta in well salted water to al dente. Drain, reserving 1/2 cup pasta water. Put pasta back into pot, crumble in goat cheese, add Parmesan, pepper. Add about 1/4 cup pasta water, stir pasta vigorously- you want the Parmesan and goat cheese to make a sauce with the water. Add more pasta water if sauce isn't saucy enough. Stir in basil and serve.
ROASTED TOMATOES
These can be used in pasta, on a sandwich, make a pesto type sauce, the possibilities are endless for these babies! They have a flavor boarding on sun-dried tomatoes, but aren't chewy and gnarly and overpowering like sun-dried tomatoes.
- 10-12 Roma tomatoes
- olive oil
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
- 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 1/2 tsp dried basil
- 1/2 tsp dried thyme
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F with a rack in the middle. Cut off the very top of the tomatoes where the stem was attached. Cut tomatoes in half. Remove seeds- I find it easiest to wash my hands really well and then stick my fingers into the halves to pop out the seeds over the garbage*. Toss tomatoes with remaining ingredients.
Roast on a baking sheet (I always cover baking sheets with foil so I don't have to wash them) cut side up for 25 minutes. Cool slightly, then use as desired.
*I would say to keep the seeds and juice for some clever, less wasteful endeavor, but I've no idea what the heck you would do with them.