I love tomatoes. I like them on salad, as a base for pasta sauce and for sauteeing meat and veggies. Tomatoes are abundant in the market again, so I thought of making tomato confit. Confit is a process of preserving food by slowly cooking it in fats.
Duck or goose are commonly used in making confit but this cooking technique can also be applied to fruits..these, I learned through google-ing the word confit 🙂 It’s simple to make, an extra step but it’ll boost the flavor of tomatoes which makes a whole lot of difference in your dishes. I pureed the tomato confit and use it as pasta sauce and just added mushroom, delicious! 🙂
Tomato Confit
I love tomatoes. I like them on salad, as a base for pasta sauce and for sauteeing meat and veggies.
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons Olive Oil extra virgin
- Salt to taste
- White Pepper freshly ground
- 3 cloves Garlic peeled / split / germ removed / finely sliced
- 10 pcs Basil Leaves torn
- 4 sprigs Thyme leaves only
- 2 pcs Bay Leaves broken
- 20 pcs Ripe Plum Tomatoes peeled
- ½ teaspoon Sugar
Instructions
- Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 200 degrees F.
- Line a baking sheet with foil and pour about 2 tablespoons olive oil evenly over the pan.
- Sprinkle the oil with salt and pepper.
- Strew a little of the garlic, basil, thyme, and bay leaves over the oil.
- Cut each tomato lengthwise in half and carefully, with your fingers or a tiny spoon, remove the seeds.
- Lay the tomato halves cut side down in the pan, wiggling the tomatoes around if necessary so that each tomato has a floss of oil on its cut side.
- Using a pastry brush, give the tops of the tomatoes a light coat of olive oil.
- Season the tops of the tomatoes with salt and pepper and a little sugar, and scatter over the rest of the garlic, basil, thyme, and bay leaves.
- Slide the pan into the oven and bake the tomatoes for 2 1/2 hours, or until they are very tender but still able to hold their shape.
- Turn the tomatoes over at half-time and open the oven for just a second every 30 minutes or so to get rid of the moisture that will build up in the oven.
- Cool the tomatoes to room temperature on their pan.
- When the tomatoes are cool, transfer them to a jar, stacking them neatly.
- Pour whatever oil remains in the pan over the tomatoes and then, if you plan to keep the tomatoes longer than 1 or 2 days, pour in enough olive oil to cover and refrigerate.
