Summer tomatoes, how do I love thee?

On BLT's, oven-dried, oven-roasted, in a sauce...

I had some less-than-stellar farmstand beefsteak tomatoes last week taking up space in my fridge. Actually, just several slices from one large tomato. The flavor was only so-so in the BLT's we'd sliced them for, but I was reluctant to throw them out, so there they sat.

Then something (probably something on Pinterest) made me think of oven-dried tomatoes. Which are basically sun-dried tomatoes, with more control and fewer bugs.

Tried it: uh, YUM!

Below are links to several recipes, but since most of them call for Roma or cherry tomatoes, I was kind of improvising. The first one on the list is the process that I more-or-less followed. Here's mine:

• oven preheated to 200 F
• large tomato, sliced into 1/4" slices
• seeds and the jelly around them poked out and set aside
• tomato slices on a cooling rack; rack nestled in my favorite baking sheet
• checked after a couple hours.

Because mine were thin and mostly jelly-less, they dried out pretty quickly. In two or three hours, some of them were already crispy. So crispy, in fact, that the pieces with a fair amount of peel were like super-tomatoey potato chips. And the tart, intense flavor? Hugely improved over the disappointing fresh version. I chowed down! (Hubs thought they tasted kinda burnt, but I thought they tasted great! Maybe he just got a bad one.) I'll probably try some more next week, to see if I can recreate that great accident.
> Oven-dried tomatoes from About.com
> Oven-dried tomatoes from Food Network
> Oven-dried tomatoes from Tomato Dirt

I mentioned that I had poked out the juices/goop from the slices before baking. One of the recipes I read mentioned "tomato water;" never heard of that, so I googled it. One "recipe" required a food processor, cheesecloth, and eight hours. But I wasn't up for that, so I just took the goop, seeds and liquid and poured the whole mess through a sieve. It yielded about a couple tablespoons of tomato-pink liquid. There wasn't enough of it to use in a recipe, but I tasted it -- then added a wee bit of salt -- and tasted it again, and it was delish! I can see it being a great liquid to poach fish in, or to put up in the freezer to add a little genuine summer taste to a winter marinara or soup.
> About tomato water, from Bon Appetit
> About tomato water, from New York Times

Also, if you want something a little less dehydrated, here's a recipe for roasted tomatoes, which just takes them to a concentrated but still fairly moist stage. I haven't tried this method, but if I did, I would make them without the herbs, to make them more versatile. 
> Oven-roasted tomatoes from Kalyn's Kitchen