Favorite Dish no. 1 – Spaghetti with Oven tomatoes

This really is one of my favorite dishes and I believe I really do make this at least once a week. This has everything to do with the fact that it takes very little time in the kitchen but is very, very tasty. It actually is a recipe my friend Marie made for me about ten years ago and I’ve been making it ever since.  It’s all about the tomatoes, since this is a product Germans are better in producing than the Dutch I especially make it a lot since we’re here.

I’m not a recipe writer and don’t know anything about the proportions, but I’ll try my best to explain. Just take a lot of tomatoes, about twice as much as you would normally use and the smaller ones are really better (about one size up from cherry tomatoes are the best). Cut them up and put them in a baking dish with a lot of olive oil, garlic from the press, balsamic vinegar and fresh thyme. Now the key is that you actually can make any time during the day because it can be in the oven for three hours, for just an hour or even a half. The shorter it stays in the oven the higher you should put the temperature, I always try and put it in the oven at least two hours before I want to eat and then put the temperature around 120C. (when late and I just have half an hour in the oven I put it up to 200C) Just stir it every now and then and adjust the temperature to make it go faster or slow it down. I always taste the juice half an hour before dinner to sometimes add a little honey to sweeten thing up because a lot in this dish depends on the quality of tomatoes. The nice thing in this dish is that it actually dries the tomatoes a bit which makes them sweeter and concentrates the taste of the tomatoes very much. After taking it out of the oven and seasoning with salt and pepper I add a few hand fresh basil leaves.

Serving is done with pasta, my favorite is spaghetti, and cheeses. I always use parmesan and when I have it in the fridge or am well prepared with fresh soft goat cheese on top. Please do try, it really is a very, very good dish. Especially with small children, in my family everybody loves it when I make it.