Slow-Roasted Tomatoes

June. It's finally, officially June. I've been waiting for this month forever--all my life, really. You see, it seems that this month is a big one for us Aries. According to my astrology idol Susan Miller, I now have Uranus (planet of surprises) in my sign for the first time since 1935 AND I also have Jupiter (planet of gifts and luck) in my sign for the first time since 1999. Apparently that's a huge deal in the good old zodiac. And they're both coincidentally here to stay for the entire summer (until September 9, to be exact). I'm taking that to mean that with any luck, I'll become rich and famous and fall in love a million times over the next three months.

Anyway, hokey astrology aside, I'm really just happy it's summer. It seems like the days of veering madly from 90 degrees in the shade one day to icy cold rain the next are definitively over. Nothing but good times ahead (if Susan Miller has anything to do with it, at least).

But here's the real reason I've been on pins and needles for June's arrival: I've been counting the days until I felt like it was appropriate to ring in my go-to recipe for slow-roasted tomatoes and share it with you guys. Call me crazy, but tomatoes in May just don't taste the same as tomatoes in June. Fact.

Last summer, every Sunday, I would wake up at a satisfyingly late hour, sleepily pad into the kitchen, slice open a few vine-ripened tomatoes and stick them in the oven, forgetting about them entirely until a few hours later when the timer would go off, conveniently just as I was finishing the big stack of Sunday papers and just in time for a simple summer lunch. I went through this routine so many times that I even started coining the day "slow roast Sundays." One thing's for sure--I'll be in the kitchen this very Sunday making the first batch of tomatoes of the season. And that's exactly what you should do too. That much I know, is in the stars for sure.

Slow-Roast Sunday Tomatoes
Serves 8

Ingredients:
Dozen vine-ripened tomatoes
2 tablespoons good extra-virgin olive oil
Sea salt
Pepper

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 275 degrees.

In a small roasting pan, toss the tomatoes with the olive oil. Roast the tomatoes, seed-side-up, for three hours.

Take them out of the oven. Eat them however you like. Personally, I like to sprinkle them with salt and pepper, pile them on a plate with a few strips of fresh basil, and eat them with an extra drizzle of olive oil and hand-torn hunks of good, local fresh mozzarella.