Garden dinner: cherry tomato confit

Garden inspiration strikes again! This time, I fell back on an old standby: cherry tomato confit. I can't remember where I first heard about it. This recipe is similar, but you hardly need a recipe after you make it once. It's designed for the overabundance that is late summer.

Spread some ricotta cheese in the bottom of a small baking dish. Halve each tomato in a pint of cherry tomatoes. Red, yellow, purple, whatever you have. Throw in a couple of smashed garlic cloves, a few sprigs of fresh herbs, and drizzle the whole mess with a bit of olive oil. Salt. Freshly ground pepper. (A jalapeno if you are Mr. H. I'm not, so no jalapeno here.)

Before. It looks good already.

Bake at 375 F for 30-45 minutes, or whenever you remember to check on it again.

After! Even better!

Tonight, we ate this for dinner as giant crostini, spooned over slices of bread that I toasted under the broiler after spraying them with olive oil. We both said, "This is so good!" several times and really meant it.

Sometimes I roast the tomatoes in a dish without ricotta cheese. Sometimes I use the tomatoes as part of a pasta sauce. It's great on a sandwich or in a salad. Whatever you end up doing with this mixture, you can't go wrong. This is an easy--and delicious--way to use a lot of cherry tomatoes at once.