Roasted Tomato Chopped Salad

Intense Tomato Flavor With Crunchy Vegetables

• Servings: 4.

This salad is a perfect way to use extra tomatoes that may be heading past their prime.  Or if it's mid-winter and you're craving an intense tomato flavor with your salad but all that's available are plum tomatoes that all too often are mealy and tasteless.  By slow roasting the tomatoes at a low oven temperature, the tomatoes will remain unbrowned but the juices will cook off, making them shrunken, velvety and their flavors intensified.

Making this salad requires some advance planning and lead time since the tomatoes are best if slow-roasted for at least two hours.  If you're going to take the time to cook tomatoes this way, roast as many as you have room for in your oven because these can keep refrigerated for days and are very versatile -- you can toss them with pasta or a steamed vegetable or re-warm and serve as a side to a piece of poached or sautéed fish.  If you turn up the oven temperature to speed the cooking the tomatoes will brown and while still delicious, won't have the same intensified flavor.

An English cucumber, also sometimes called a "hothouse" cucumber, is seedless and usually sold wrapped in clear plastic.

This salad is a wonderful side to a simple piece of cooked fish or meat.  But I love a whole bowl of it as a light supper.

Ingredients

• 10 plum tomatoes, quartered
• 1 English cucumber, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice (about 2 cups)
• 1 medium red onion, cut into small dice
• 1 15 oz. can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
• 1/4 lb. Feta cheese, crumbled
• 3 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• Salt
• Freshly ground black pepper

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 250º F.
2. On a large sheet pan, arrange the quartered tomatoes, cut side up. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and add a generous pinch of salt and several grinds of black pepper. Using your hands, make sure that the olive oil, salt and pepper are evenly dispersed among the tomato pieces and finish by making sure that the cut side of the tomatoes remains up.
3. Roast for about 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Check the tomato pieces occasionally and give the pan a little shake so that the tomatoes don't stick. When they have shrunk in size and darkened in color -- although you're not trying to brown them -- remove from the oven.
4. Let cool to room temperature.
5. In a large salad or serving bowl combine the tomatoes with the diced cucumber, onion, chickpeas and crumbled Feta cheese.
6. Add the remaining tablespoon of olive oil.
7. Toss to combine and serve immediately.