Roasted Summer Veggies

Several varieties of heirloom tomatoes, eggplant, bell pepper, yellow squash.  And that weird little greenish white thing to the left of the squash is actually a cucumber.  Who knew?  Didn't roast that.

I heard about making candied tomatoes in the oven while listening to "Splendid Table" this morning, so I decided to try it.  While at it, I thought I'd roast some veggies.  I plan to use these veggies as a base on which to place little Caprese salads for Thursday night wine night.  The tomatoes may contribute to those caprese salads or may just be a snack or will go well over pasta.

You'll need:

• Veggies!  
• For candied tomatoes, get really juicy tomatoes, not Romas.  Heirlooms, as always, are best, but you can find some really juicy hybrid varieties.  I'd say the smaller the better, as those tend to be juicier.
• For veggies, the best types for roasting are eggplant (and I prefer the light purple variety you see in my photo.  I've found the long, skinny, light purple eggplant are about 10 times as flavorful as the typical large round, dark purple ones), yellow squash, zucchini, peppers, red onions.
• a cup or so of olive oil.  You'll need enough to cover the veggies and sit beneath them in the pan while roasting
• a few pinches of kosher or sea salt
• Italian seasoning
• a couple tablespoons red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar

The steps:

• Preheat oven to 400degrees
• Wash and core your tomatoes, but don't seed.  Small ones may be chopped in half, slightly bigger ones in quarters, and so on.  You want to have about 1 inch segments.
• Wash and sliced your other veggies.  Since I wanted flat veggies for little caprese salads (also good for sandwiches), I cut them thin.  For the squash, I cut the ends off then made slices on the bias.  For the eggplant, I cut the stem off, sat it upright resting on the cut part, and sliced large, flat slices vertically.  Peppers were cut into strips, too small and they'll burn.
• Place all of your veggies into a deepish metal pan.  I used a large casserole.  Tomatoes should be placed skin side down and other veggies laid out flat.
• Coat with olive oil.
• take a few pinches of salt and sprinkle over the top
• The tomatoes need nothing more, but you should generously sprinkle the other veggies in Italian seasoning and vinegar.  (A shortcut to this is to coat the veggies in Italian dressing)
• Roast in the oven for 20 minutes.  Remove all veggies but tomatoes.
• Roast tomatoes for 10 more minutes at 400 degrees.
• Reduce heat to 350 and roast tomatoes for another 30 minutes.
• Reduce heat to 300 and roast for another 30 minutes.  If, after this go round, the tomatoes aren't starting to darken, reduce the heat again to 250 and roast for another 30 minutes.

Store veggies in containers on their own.  Store tomatoes in containers with the oil they roasted in.  Can be frozen.

When serving, use the veggies as you'd like.  For the tomatoes, drain off the oil then serve.  Keep the oil from this roasting, which will be a great addition to marinades, soups, and sauces.

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