Blue Cheese Stuffed Roasted Tomatoes

This one's a good one.  Super easy, but beyond delicious.  Blue cheese and tomatoes, how could you go wrong, right?  Do it right and it's amazing, really.  As a vegetarian, I serve these as either a main course or a side dish. 

Roasting tomatoes is a magic act.  Even bland and out-of-season tomatoes become sweet and delicious with roasting.  So, you don't have to be too picky about the tomatoes you buy for this recipe.  Get exactly the right size and shape, or the cheap ones, it doesn't matter, they will all taste good. 

For the filling, rip up crusty bread into large bread crumbs.  Day-old bread is fine.  For two small tomatoes (that's four halves), I use just one slice of bread.  It doesn't take much.  In a bowl with the bread, I mix in an equal amount of crumbled blue cheese, and then about a tablespoon of chopped fresh rosemary.  I like to use an artisanal blue cheese, something that's creamy and a little sweet, but regular old storebought crumbles are ok too.  After stirring the blue cheese mix together, press it together in the bowl, and leave it sit for just a few minutes so that the bread crumbs hydrate a little and the mixture sortof comes together as a whole.

The tomatoes get sliced in half.  For roma tomatoes, which I like for this, I slice them lengthwise.  Take out the stem base, seeds, and any white or green flesh.  No need to scoop out the whole inside of the tomato; just the seeds is fine.  Drizzle the tomato halves with olive oil, salt and pepper, and then just top them with pressed spoonfuls of the blue cheese mixture.  This can be done well ahead of time and put in the oven later.  See?  Easy.

The roasting time depends on the size of the tomatoes and how done you like them, but for small romas I would say about 20 to 30 minutes.  I like them so that the tomatoes still have some structure to them.  You can sprinkle them with some more fresh rosemary or parsley at the end.  If you really want to get crazy you can drizzle them with a little balsamic.  But they are great just as is.  I'm telling you, it's nummy.  Give it a try sometime, you will not be disappointed, I guarantee it.

Happy eating!

Oh, and Happy Halloween!  Enjoy your candy, and be safe out there everybody!