Sumac and Maple Roasted Tomatoes

Melt in Your Mouth Perfectly Roasted Tomatoes.

There are those times when comfort food is necessary. This meal came about due to one of those times. I had a double batch of my homemade ricotta sitting in the fridge and decided mid afternoon that dinner was going to be simple. 

Earlier in the week I experienced a mistake with my grocery delivery and found myself with half a dozen tomatoes of which I had no idea if they were going to be any good. This is the full description provided for these tomatoes – slicing tomatoes. Well, that says absolutely nothing, right? I didn’t have high hopes, but thought, well, I can possibly coax some flavor out of these as long as the texture is good. 

At this point they’d been sitting on the counter for 4 or 5 days and as I cut into the first one I was rewarded with the fragrance of what seemed to be a really good tomato. The texture was great and after tasting it I knew I was going to end up with some fantastic roasted tomatoes. They had plenty of acidity, and I felt they only needed a tiny bit of help in the sweetness department. So, here’s what I did. 

I cored and cut the tomatoes in half, placed them in a baking dish and sprinkled each one with salt, sumac, and urfa biber. I then tucked some basil leaves down and around the tomatoes before drizzling each one with only a couple drops of pure maple syrup and pouring a generous amount of olive oil over and around them. 45 minutes in a moderately heated oven and they were at that perfect stage where they just start to break down and the oil was bubbling all around them. I let them sit for about a half hour before serving them with some of that gorgeously flavored olive oil spooned on top. 

Knowing I would need bread for this meal, and seeing as how I only had a few hours until it would be needed, I turned to the recipe I use when time is of the essence. It’s a recipe from King Arthur called The Easiest Loaf of Bread You’ll Ever Bake, and that’s no lie. From beginning to end, it takes about 3 hours to get these loaves onto the table. Let them cool and you add another half hour onto those 3 hours. This bread is crisp and flavorful with a sturdy crumb – exactly what I needed for my meal because I knew I’d be using it to soak up those tomato juices and oil. 

Two of us ate the tomatoes, a scoop of ricotta, and bread for our complete dinner. The other person added a piece of leftover heated up chicken. All were very happy. The tomatoes were beyond excellent. This is my kind of food. I could eat it every week and never get bored. 

Here is a link to King Arthur’s bread recipe:
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/the-easiest-loaf-of-bread-youll-ever-bake-recipe