Expanding my "hot-day meal" repertoire...??

Roasted Cherry Tomatoes on Home-made Focaccia It was about 2 weeks ago when I visited Suzan’s wonderful site and read about her roasted baby tomatoes. Living in a rural town known for its tomato production, I knew that I was going to give it a try sometime soon. And look! I did. :) If I forgot to mention this before, our prefecture, Kochi is famous for tomatoes as well as fresh seafood. Some “sweet” varieties grown here have become popular throughout the country, especially after the news related to Japanese Royal family. What news? It was that when Princess Kiko was pregnant, Empress Michiko sent her some bottled tomato juice. The empress thought that the good-tasting and highly nutritious juice was good for a pregnant woman . That tomato juice was made in Kochi using locally grown sweet tomatoes called “fruit tomato.” Personally, I love to eat the "fruit tomatoes" raw, but never use them for cooking, not only because they are lacking the refreshing mild tartness which, I think, is important for tomato sauce, stew, etc., but also because they are darn expensive. So, of course I tried roasting regular, inexpensive cherry tomatoes. Look! Lovely, aren't they? To be honest, for some reason they turned out a lot more sour than I had expected. (I wonder why.) But they were still very good with a tempting aroma. Suzan presented them on a slice of tasty-looking bruschetta, but I couldn’t find anything like that at a nearby bakery and I didn’t think I could bake such a thing myself. After searching for an alternative idea, I found this focaccia recipe, and thought it was what I wanted. As the recipe says, the focaccia was so easy to make that even I had a great success. ;) When eaten with this Italian bread, the roasted tomatoes did not taste too tart, and the bread and tomatoes made a real good combination together. My “hot day meals” used to include some traditional Japanese dishes and some spicy Asian or Mexican dishes only. But this summer I’m interested in expanding my repertoire of Italian dishes. Oh, I’m serious. ;) Categories: Western-inspired