Slow-Roasted Winter Tomatoes

I love winter tomatoes. They’re hard as rocks, often mealy, and have a color that only bears the slightest resemblance to the real tomatoey hue, as if the poor things were put in the washer with the whites, faded by too-hot rinse cycles.

But often they’re on sale — I look for the Romas — and when they are, I buy as many as I can carry home.

Then I make oven-dried tomatoes, which turn these sad winter tomatoes into something juicy, sweet, and totally delish.

They’re fantastic on pizzas, tossed with pasta, in omelets, blended and made into a hearty tomato soup, thrown into salads, or on a sandwich. They also freeze well. So no need to feel tomato-deprived in the winter.

You don’t really need a recipe. Here’s all you do.

Slice the tomatoes in half, and remove the insides, seeds and juices.

Then put them on a cookie sheet, empty insides up.

Drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with sea salt, freshly cracked pepper and herbes de Provence.

Slide into a cool (100C/212F) oven, and let cook for 8-10 hours. (I usually do this at night, before I go to bed, and let them roast on their own.) Store them in a jar in the fridge with a little olive oil for a few days, or put them in heavy duty plastic bags and keep them in the freezer — they’ll last much longer this way.