Tomato Week: Roasted Cherry Tomatoes with Angel Hair Pasta and Homemade Croutons

I have posted about roasting tomatoes a few times before, but can't have tomato week and not talk about roasting cherry tomatoes. I hope by now you guys have tried my absolute favorite way to use up a lot of the little bite-sized tomatoes - cut them in half and put in a shallow roasting dish, toss with a little olive oil and coarse salt (other seasonings are up to you - pepper, Italian blend, whatever), and bake at 350' to 400' until you like the consistency stirring occasionally. The longer they bake the more they thicken up and turn into an almost glazed texture which is so so so good (!), shorter time is still good and keeps them a little 'fresher' and lighter texture - just depends on what you want to do with them.

For this dish I let the tomatoes really cook down, at least an hour (turn the temp down if they seem like they are cooking too fast - you'l know if they start to turn too dark but not getting thick and syrupy), then tossed them (including the juice and olive oil) with cooked angel hair pasta. Another one of our favorites is to add homemade croutons (click to see how I make them, very easy!) to red-sauced pasta - almost like a panzanella bread salad, the croutons soak up the sauce but still add a little texture to the dish. Nothing like adding bread to pasta to keep this dish low-carb LOL. Whatever, it's good. For a little more color and to beef up the veggies I added some chopped fresh spinach this time - add whatever else you like...cooked mushrooms, peas, chopped asparagus or broccoli would all be good.

Oh man do I love this pasta and roasted tomatoes SO MUCH!!!


one year ago: morning glory muffins
two years ago: Japanese steakhouse carrot-ginger salad dressing

Pasta with Roasted Tomatoes and Fresh Chicken Sausage

This came together as a last minute "throw stuff in and see what happens" dinner, turned out so good and flavorful that I thought I'd share. The big take-away here is that you don't have to have a "recipe" to make easy quick delish dinners - it's ok to just wing it!

I was roasting cherry tomatoes (you know I'm obsessed with them - click here for one of many posts) with olive oil, coarse salt and italian seasoning, and trying to decide how to turn them into dinner. Dave brought home some fresh chicken sausage links from our little meat store and I thought they'd be great grilled, served over a bed of the roasted tomatoes mixed with pasta - super simple. Just boil whatever pasta you have on hand, mix together with the roasted tomatoes in all the juice and olive oil that's in the pan (add a little more olive oil if it seems like it needs it), I threw in a handful of arugula and adjusted the seasonings. We boiled the sausages in a couple inches of water for 10 minutes, drain and then finished on the grill. A little parmesan to finish. Done. And yum.

Roasted Tomatoes, Zucchini, and White Beans

My cherry tomatoes are really starting to come in so I did my favorite thing and roasted them along with a couple zucchini and a can of white beans. It was so good Dave asked me to make it twice this week!

Simple - halve cherry tomatoes and slice small zucchini about 1/2" thick, put in a baking dish and drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with seasonings (I used course salt and italian seasoning).   Bake in 400' oven for at least 30 -45 minutes stirring occasionally. When the veggies are done to your liking add one can of well-rinsed white beans and continue baking until the beans are heated thru. If it seems a little dry I add a bit of spaghetti sauce - it's fine without it though. I finished by sprinkling with parmesan.

We had this as a side to grilled chicken one night, then 2 nights later I made it again as a side with pork tenderloin.

Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

My favorite thing to do with end of season cherry tomatoes - I cut them in half (green ones too!) and roast with olive oil, salt and pepper (sometimes I'll put italian seasoning on) at 350' for a couple hours. It's SO good - I put it on anything I can think of, tonight it'll be over creamy polenta. 

I make this any time of the year with store bought cherry tomatoes and it's delish - but of course using home grown tastes the best! 

You can also freeze this, I put in small freezer bags and squeeze out as much air as possible (using my straw method - close the ziplock around a straw and suck out all the air, remove the straw and quickly seal the ziplock to close).