My love affair with roasted tomatoes (with a special thank you to Reenu)

I guess this posting should technically reside in the "Things that change the way I cook" segment, but for now I'll let it stand alone in all its glory. As you've probably gathered by now (or know simply because you are friends with or kin to me), I am an American woman from European heritage, born and raised in the Midwest, who happened to partner up with a pretty incredible guy from India. When I met him, he was already busy teaching himself the fine art of Indian cooking by infusing the techniques and ingredients of his motherland. Let's just say that I happily took a backseat to his culinary wisdom with respect to Indian cooking. And I've pretty much stayed there for the length of our relationship. Not to say that I never dabbled in Indian cooking. I learned how to make a pretty mean egg curry early on, and I got fairly competent in making dal without a pressure cooker, but for the most part I stuck to the things that felt more familiar and what I believed to be less time consuming. That is, until last summer.

Our friend Reenu from Palo Alto came out to Chicago with her son, Sahir, to hang out with us for a week or so. As is the case, it seems, with all of us parents with young children, our socializing as adults generally started in the evenings after our little ones were tucked in for the night. Although we had already started cooking earlier in the evening, so that the kids would have something to eat before bedtime, we would later get a bit more elaborate and more liberal with the spices. We would talk effortlessly about anything that popped into our minds: education, India, west coast versus east coast (and then where the Midwest fell in all of that), consumerism, politics. You name it, we seemed to cover it. And all of this talking would take place over the stove (a glass of wine in one hand, a wooden spoon in the other). We would then sink into our table bench and consume the bounty. That week, Reenu did most of the cooking, and there were some simple techniques she incorporated that have easily been responsible for my newly found courage in the art of Indian cuisine.

Some gorgeous onions from that day

The first Saturday she was with us, we went to the farmers market in Evanston, as we often do during the summers. The vegetables and fruits and breads we brought back between the three of us filled our counter tops and our kitchen table. We had piles of onions, peppers, radishes, greens, okra, eggplant, and tomatoes, oh yes, many tomatoes. Reenu came in with at least two to three huge bags of tomatoes, and I couldn't quite make out how we were going to eat that many tomatoes in a week. As we started to unfurl, wash, and tuck the veggies here and there, she asked for a large cookie sheet and started quartering the roma tomatoes and placing them one by one on the cookie sheet. When she had filled it to capacity, she generously doused the tomatoes with olive oil and set the baking sheet into the oven at around 300 degrees. After two to three hours, she took out the sheet and let the amazingly caramelized and shriveled tomatoes cool. After roasting a couple of batches, she then proceeded to puree them in the food processor. The result was the most lovely and thick roasted tomato sauce I've ever seen. This tomato puree was then used as a base for almost every dish we made over the next few days. Of course, every dish would taste completely different, depending on the vegetable, and whether it had tamarind, or cumin, or coriander, or yogurt added. But the unifying taste was deeply rich and a tad sweet, thanks to the caramelizing.

Unlike Reenu in California, we aren't able to enjoy the bounty of fresh, local tomatoes throughout the year here in Chicago, and I found myself toward the end of farmers market season scouring the farmers' tables for all the tomatoes I could find (seconds often were the best, since they could be as ripe as ever and still work great for roasting). I roasted a lot of tomatoes in those last weeks, placing Ziploc bags one after the other in the freezer. And during the winter, even though I would like to say I am always a local and seasonal  buyer, I did find myself bringing large bags home of tomatoes to roast and restock the freezer. This summer, I may just teach myself how to can, to preserve the flavor even better and have a much larger stash for the off-season.

So what did this simple but profound new discovery bestow upon me? Simply enough, it gave me the courage to cook more Indian food (as well as other things), since everything I started to make with these tomatoes began to taste divine (okay, so maybe I'm being a bit overconfident, but I was amazed at the difference). No more over-boiled or watered-down flavor from the fresh tomatoes added too early, too late, too wrong. And I've used these tomatoes in Italian dishes (in pastas and on pizzas), in salsas, as marinades, in soups, etc. It has been one of those things that has enriched my cooking in significant ways. And all from something that many Indian cooks would probably find to be a basic foundation (I never did ask Reenu where she learned this preparation). For this, I thank her deeply, for it is forever lovely the things we learn from others that become deep expressions of our day-to-day endeavors.

So perhaps I'll start a new segment entitled, "How simple ideas from friends have changed the foods I cook." I know then I would always have something incredible to write about.