Roman Style Artichokes and Marcella Hazan's Perfect Lunch

I just finished reading Marcella Hazan's recently released autobiography, "Amacord".    We all know Marcella Hazan as the Queen of Italian cooking but when she and her husband, Victor, first moved to the United States, she wasn't much of a cook.  As a newlywed in a foreign country, she poured her efforts into learning how to cook so that Victor, who came home for lunch every day from work, would be pleased.   Needless to say, over the years she became quite a cook.   She started giving small cooking classes out of her apartment and one day she received a call from a reporter at the New York Times.  She didn't know who he was.  He wanted to come over and interview her, but the times he suggested were always in the middle of the day when Victor came home for lunch, so she just invited the reporter over for lunch one day. The reporter was Craig Claiborne and the lunch Marcella served knocked his socks off.  This was back in 1970 and her authentic Italian cooking was anything but the usual spaghetti and meatball fare everyone knew at that time as Italian cuisine.   She served a lunch of Roman style artichokes, tortelloni stuffed with swiss chard, prosciutto and ricotta, veal rolls stuffed with parmesan and pancetta, fennel salad and a dessert of marinated orange slices. To this day, she said she doesn't think she could improve on that lunch.  It was classic.

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Tomato Harvest

The farmer's markets are full of tomatoes right now and I've made tomato soup and tomato sauce but one of my favorite things to do with fresh tomatoes is to roast them. If you have a lot of tomatoes that you want to put to use, try using them this way. I usually use Marcella Hazan's method - slow roasting them in the oven with garlic and chopped parsley. The slow roasting dries them out and concentrates their flavor. You can't believe how intense they taste. I love to eat them as a snack or serve them as a side dish at dinner but you can also put them on sandwiches and salads. It's a super easy method with amazing results.

All you need to make this dish are any kind of tomatoes (I used Early Girls in this post), garlic, parsley, olive oil and salt and pepper. Slice the tomatoes in half and place on a baking sheet. Chop some fresh parsley and and mince some garlic and combine. Sprinkle this mixture over the tomatoes, season with salt and pepper and pour some olive oil on the tomatoes. Place the baking sheet on the upper rack of the oven and back at 325 degrees. Marcella bakes hers for one hour. I like to bake mine for two hours. They should be a little blackened around the edges when they are done. Delicious!