It has been a great first year of gardening. A few mistakes and a couple of lost plants but overall I have eaten some of the best tasting veggies I have had since I was a child. The biggest success was with the tomatoes. Only two plants but they have produced a wonderful abundance of fruit.
The challenge is what to do with all of the tomatoes. I have had fried green tomatoes, fresh tomatoes slices, beautiful salads, and the occasional pico de gallo. However tonight I am bringing stuffed shells with roasted tomato and garlic marinara to a pot luck. This will take most of my available ripe tomatoes. No worries. I have another bunch about to turn red.
When roasting tomatoes, different people have different opinions on skins and seeds. I prefer to leave the skins on during roasting. When using tomatoes from my garden I usually do not bother to remove the skins since the skins are very thin. Some tomatoes from the grocery tend to have thicker skins so I remove those after the tomatoes are roasted. As for the seeds, I leave them in. Some people don’t. If you don’t like the seeds then just scoop them out before roasting.
Ingredients:
5-6 pounds fresh tomatoes
8 cloves garlic
Sea salt
Spray cooking oil
1 large diced onion
¼ cup fresh basil chopped
Steps:
1. Clean and cut tomatoes in half
2. Arrange tomatoes on baking sheet with garlic cloves
3. Spray with cooking oil and sprinkle on sea salt
4. Bake at 350 for 90 minutes
5. While tomatoes are cooking add two tablespoons oil to a deep pan and cook the diced onion until it is tender
6. Add tomatoes and garlic to food processor and pulse until desired consistence
7. Simmer for 30 minutes
I’m looking forward to trying something like this in a solar oven sometime. I’ll bet the cooking time would be close to all day, but it would be well worth it!
It would take a bit of time but I’m wondering if the flavor would be richer with a solar oven since slow roasting can bring out rich flavor.
What did you stuff them with? Loving my summer garden, as well, and my abundance of tomatoes will go nicely with this sauce!
Hi Jackie, I didn’t actually stuff the tomatoes with anything. I just cut them in half and topped them with a bit of spray oil and sea salt.