Roasted Cherry Tomato Sauce

Our garden was weird this year.  I guess I shouldn't say that.  I've never gardened in Southern California (kinda) before so maybe it was normal, but I thought it was weird.  The cherry tomatoes were supposed to be the first to ripen!  It said so on the package of seeds.  For some reason, they ripened AFTER some of our other tomato varieties that were supposed to take twice as long.  While I was a little confused as to why these sleeper tomatoes did that, I wasn't upset that we actually got some produce from our plants.  

When we did get cherry tomatoes a couple weeks ago, we picked about 2- 1.5 gallon buckets of them!  I decided I needed something to do with them and this was one of my decisions.  And it was a darn good one.  I know you are probably not in that same predicament right now because it's October, but I really wanted to get this recipe down so I'd remember it for next year.  It was so easy, hardly any prep time or hands-on time and we really liked the result.

Roasted Cherry Tomato Sauce

5 cups cherry tomatoes, washed and stemmed

1 med onion, sliced

5 cloves garlic, smashed

1/4 cup fresh basil leaves

1/2 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1 tsp sugar

3 T olive oil

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Toss all ingredients in a bowl until well mixed.  Transfer to baking dish (I used 9x13) and bake for about 30-35 minutes.

 Until tomatoes are roasted and popped and onions are tender.

Puree in food processor and check seasonings-add salt/pepper to taste. Serve.  I didn't need it right away so I froze it in a bag until we were ready to use it.  This is what we did with it when we took it out of the freezer.

Soooo good!

Makes about 3 cups sauce.

Inspired by:  Brooklyn Farm Girl