Slow roasting tomatoes (encore)

It was about this time last year that I learnt to slow roast tomatoes. Sometimes I love spending all day Saturday or Sunday cooking and the slow roasting tomatoes in the oven which takes over 4 hours gives me a great excuse to hang around the kitchen, browse through my cookbooks and find interesting things to make.

This year, I used 6 heirloom tomatoes that I bought from Whole Foods. I cut the tomatoes from the equator and laid down the halves on a large baking tray.
I drizzled a little bit of balsamic vinegar on each half as well as some sea salt, freshly ground pepper and some fresh basil. They looked so delicious that I was super tempted to forget about roasting and enjoy the fresh and juicy tomatoes as is:

I then should have poured half a cup of extra virgin olive oil all over the tomatoes and stuck them in a pre-heated 350 degree fahrenheit oven and left them alone for about four hours at which point they become amazingly packed with flavour:

While writing this post I realized that I forgot to add the olive oil which is why the tomatoes in the photo look somewhat dry. They were as tasty though so I inadvertently cut out some calories without losing taste. These cooked tomatoes can be used in many creative ways. I like them as antipasti or between toasted bread with some pesto.