Errors, recipes gone wrong, and being flexible: winter tomatoes

Strictly speaking, this winter has not been any longer than any other. And temperature wise, it hasn't been especially fierce. Yet, yours truly, and many other people, seem to have had ENOUGH. This isn't uncommon in March, when you have flashes of warm weather with the cold, but still.. Annalena has heard many of her friends, being quite vociferous in their wanting this TO END NOW. Annalena is amongst them.
When I get tired of a season, I look to food "out of season." As I've written before, you can always argue that something is "in season" SOMEWHERE. Peaches are growing in Chili, even as I speak. You can have them. There is very little I can do for them. And I don't have the hankering for them. But asparagus have begun to come in, in Southern California. We'll be having those tonight. And I broke down with my craving for tomatoes this week, because of a recipe in the Ina Garten book I have been writing about.
Ina "gets it." She admits, right up front, that winter tomatoes are horrible. She's right. She then goes on to propose a recipe that makes them work. It's a good idea. She roasts them, at high temperature, in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, adding basil at the end. Three items that seem to have been "invented" to go with tomatoes.

Well, I made her recipe, which was accompanied by a picture. Her tomatoes were burnished brown, whole, solid, lovely things. Not so, mine. Perhaps mine had too much water in them, perhaps I had them too close to each other on the pan, but what I got was, essentially, a cross between stewed tomatoes, and tomato sauce. They sure tasted GOOD, but not what I expected.

So what do you do when that happens? Well, you learn to be flexible. Clearly, I could not serve these as whole tomatoes. What's wrong with a puree, though? Or, as I used them, pizza sauce. I have tons of red sauce in the fridge, always do. These, however, were better. MUCH better. I urge you to make this. It's really good.

You start with 12 plum tomatoes. That will be about 3 pounds of them. Cut them in half, lengthwise, and scoop out the seeds. Then, lay them out on a baking sheet. You should space them as much as possible. Maybe if they look TOO close, put them on two sheets, who knows? Then, sprinkle them with a teaspoon and a half of salt, and two of sugar. Now you add, say a third of a cup of olive oil, less if you like, sprinkling it all over the tomatoes. Finally, two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar gets sprinkled too.

Put the tray in a preheated, 450 oven, for 25 minutes or so. Check. As I say, with Ina's recipe, they looked burnished and whole. Mine collapsed. When you take them out of the oven, if you were smart last summer and froze pesto, add some to it. If you didn't, and you have some good quality commercial stuff, a few tablespoons please. And if you don't, don't do anything. Either scoop the stuff up, and put it in a container, or store the items as whole, half tomatoes. Either way, you have something wonderful that can go with your eggs in the morning, or you can use them as I did, in a pizza topping, or put them underneath something meaty, like a chicken breast. Or, just eat them whole.

The smart ones out there will see that, while pesto is wonderful, you can substitute. Make an arrabiata by adding red hot pepper. Or, if you have some rosemary sprigs, go for it. I bet there are other ideas too. The basic idea, though , is to roast those tomatoes until their sugar comes out. And because the winter tomatoes may not have enough residual sugar to begin with, that's why you add the granulated sugar, and the balsamic vinegar.

They'll be here soon, ragazzi, but if you can't wait, get the bad ones and make em good. That's what cooking is all about. ONWARD TO SPRING!!!!