Roasted tomato salad

For this edition of Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by the lovely Sher - a wonderful cook and my fellow Daring Baker - I chose this delicious and easy to prepare salad, a recipe taken from Delia Smith’s website.



I’ve made three changes: I didn’t skin the tomatoes, I pitted the olives before adding them in the end and I also scattered the tomatoes with some capers.

Although I had it in room temperature – and it’s a warm day here, 28ºC - I think this would be wonderful served as a warm salad in cold days.

Roasted tomato salad

12 large tomatoes
2 large or 4 small cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
12 large fresh basil leaves
salt and freshly milled black pepper

Dressing:
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

To garnish:
fresh basil leaves
24 black olives
1 cup capers

Preheat the oven to 200ºC/400°F.
Oil a shallow 40 x 30cm (16 x 12 in) roasting tin and set aside.

Skin the tomatoes first of all by pouring boiling water over them and leaving for 1 minute, then drain and, as soon as they are cool enough to handle, slip off the skins. (Protect your hands with a cloth if necessary.)
Cut each tomato in half, around the middle rather than vertically, and place the halves in the roasting tin (cut side uppermost) and season with salt and freshly milled pepper. After that, sprinkle on the chopped garlic, distributing it evenly between the tomatoes. Follow this with a few droplets of olive oil on each one, then top each one with half a basil leaf, turning each piece of leaf over to get a coating of oil.

Place the roasting tin in the top half of the oven and roast the tomatoes for 50-60 minutes or until the edges are slightly blackened. Then remove the tin from the oven and allow the tomatoes to cool. All this can be done several hours ahead.

To serve the tomatoes, transfer them to individual serving plates, then whisk the oil and balsamic vinegar together and drizzle this over the tomatoes. Finally top each one with an olive and garnish with basil leaves. Lots of crusty bread is an essential accompaniment to this.

Serves 4-6 as a starter