Stephencooks

I've always been fascinated with the role errors play in discoveries, and in the creation of new ideas in the kitchen...and now I'm becoming equally fascinated at how writing a blog about my cooking has changed and enhanced my cooking by making me more open to new ideas and by putting me in daily touch with a whole community of people messing about in the kitchen and telling each other about it.

The error that opened this particular door was roasting a tray of tomatoes way too long, or actually probably the mistake was roasting them at too high a temperature. The late summer tomatoes are on hand, with field seconds available at low prices, so I decided to follow Alanna's slow roasting instructions with about a dozen ripe tomatoes I had on hand, to compare her method with mine, which is slightly different. Alanna calls for roasting the tomatoes 9 to 12 hours at 200º and since Alanna and I trade recipes and riff on each other's stuff all the time, I have total confidence in everything the Veggie Evangelist says, I set the oven at 200º, dosed the tomatoes with oil, garlic (a lot more than Alanna suggested), herbs (dried, as she said, though I almost never use dried herbs when I can get fresh), and salt and slid them in the oven at 9:30 in the morning. At 6:15 I came back and my nose immediately told me that I'd had way too much confidence in the cheapio apartment oven that I'm still getting used to. A peek in the oven confirmed it: the tomatoes were, on first glance, shrivelled little black cinders.

This was a big disappoinment (I was dreaming about a tray of plump red goodness, like this) and I was about to disgustedly shovel the whole mess into the bin when Elise asked me if I was sure there was no way to use the tomatoes, which looked for all the world like a pile of fire-roasted chiles -- blackened edges, with various shades of deep dark maroon fading in and out of the glossy wrinkles. I took a bite out of one and found it crunchy but also quite strongly flavored, with acid, sweet and sun-dried tomato notes -- and relatively little of the "burnt-toast" flavor I expected -- so I piled the little carcasses in a bowl, scraped in all the dried, burned bits and herbs from the pan and poured some olive oil over them to see if they could be reconstituted.

A day went by and I remembered Melissa's pesto sauce presentation, which I had praised in a post about green pesto variations a couple of days ago, and the red pesto sauce ("pesto rosso") she showcased along with her green. A quick check there and I found that the tomatoes in that recipe were sun-dried tomatoes, and so decided to try my little cinders in a pesto based on Melissa's.

I made some changes, of course -- adding some fresh basil since we're also swimming in that these days -- but pretty much it's Melissa's recipe (which she says was adapted from Patricia Wells' Trattoria).

The result was excellent. A deep, almost black maroon and laced through with charred bits of tomato skin, the sauce had a rich, smoky bite that was tomato in a highly concentrated form, and the roasted herbs gave the sauce a strongly nuanced flavor, with hints of fennel, basil, oregano and thyme. After satisfying servings of pasta tossed in the sauce we contentedly tore up a loaf of rustic bread and happily wiped the plates and bowls clean. We also tucked a nice portion away in the fridge for use on crostini, in omelets or as an enrichment for a hearty fall soup. Thanks Alanna and thanks Melissa, for contributing to this delicious variation, and thanks, of course, to E, who always challenges me to go around one more corner, and who enthusiastically appreciates the results when things turn out so well!