Roasted Tomatoes

I served these as a side dish with the Salmon with White Wine Sauce (and tossed spinach with pine nuts and feta cheese). There are many variations to this, and you can play around with flavors, etc and try out different things. Here's what I did:

Ingredients:

about 4 fresh Roma Tomatoes, cut in half lengthwise
Olive Oil
Thyme
Minced Garlic (I don't know how many cloves; I use the already-minced garlic you can buy at the grocery store)

Directions:

You will be first baking and then broiling the tomatoes, so use a baking sheet that will also fit in your broiler. If necessary, you can probably remove the sheet that comes in the broiler and use this directly in the oven too. If this won't work, use a cookie sheet and then remove from there and place on the broiler sheet/pan later.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Place halved tomatoes on a cookie sheet / broiler pan sprayed lightly with cooking spray / oil. Drizzle olive oil over the tops of the tomatoes. Sprinkle with Thyme. Place in oven and cook for about 20-25 minutes. Check tomatoes, you may want to add a little more oil. It should start to look almost as if they are caramelizing. Cook about 5 minutes more.

Remove from oven and put garlic on each tomato. I put about 1/4 teaspoon of minced garlic on each tomato and spread it out a little.

Place into broiler and broil for 5 minutes or less. You want the tops to just start to brown, but not to become blackened.

Serve hot as a side dish.

Some thoughts on variations:

As Mandy and I were eating these delightful tomatoes, we thought of lots of options. One would be to add a little bit of Parmesan cheese or Mozzarella cheese to the tomatoes when they are broiling. Another idea was to serve with Feta cheese (sprinkle on after you remove). And of course, you could switch up the herbs. I liked the flavor of just the thyme and garlic, but basil would probably be delicious as well.