oven-candied tomatoes

Lynne Rossetto Kasper's The Italian Country Table is full of good, simple food like these tomatoes, which the author's source is quoted as calling "money in the bank" in mid-winter. The idea is to simulate the effect of several hours in a cooling bread oven on these babies. Ever go to a farmers' market and see those beautiful, ripe plum tomatoes and wish you had an excuse for picking up a bushel? Now you do.

• Cut the tomatoes in half if they're Italian Plum or into chunks about that size for other varieties.
• Place skin side down in a roasting pan, sprinkle with a bit of salt and drizzle good olive oil over the lot. Throw a few crushed whole garlic cloves and some bay leaves into the pan it you have them.
• Put pan in a 450 degree oven (what is with us and that temperature?!) and decrease the temperature by 50 degrees every half hour until you reach 200-250 and the tomatoes look a bit schrivelled and brown around the edges.
• Pour tomatoes, oil and all into a clean jar or whatever. Probably keeps in the fridge for a week or two, put you'll never have them around that long. They freeze very well (with the oil) and keep frozen for, oh, at least eight months.

These are delicious on pasta, with poached or grilled fish, grilled pork chops, fried polenta, on toast,... Recently I layered these, chunks of fresh goat's milk cheese and pitted, coarsely chopped kalamata olives and some dried oregano and pepper in a little ceramic pot and served it as a first course with crusty bread and roasted garlic (slice off the top of the bulb, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper, wrap in Al foil and roast at 375 for 1 hour). It was insane!!