Tomato Gratin- Two Wrongs Make a Luscious Right

February often boasts only Valentine's Day- a dubious blessing- and uncertain weather- no romantic snow, no promise yet of spring. The Greek Orthodox calender is running early this year though so we add to Valentine's Day both Grilled-Meat-Smoke Thursday (Mardi Gras. but Thusday instead of Tuesday) and Clean Monday (that's like Ash Wednesday celebrated by our Catholic friends), boxing in with wanton vice on the one end and refreshing virtue at the other our ten day Carnival festivity, such as it is.

A tempting gratin- bubbling cream and fragrant herbs not only conceal
 but transform some very uninspiring winter tomatoes.

That's a lot of holidays. But it doesn't change the fact that by February embracing the seasons has meant a couple weeks too many of cauliflower and cabbage for them to be very exciting, and that the artichokes and asparagus and baby zucchini of spring are a few weeks off (and tomatoes, further than that). And after all the holiday expenses, fancy ingredients seem out of order. That's another reason we need a little affordable luxury. Why the spiel? I'm justifying buying out of season, ending up with a couple of kilos of swollen pale tomatoes that were tempting in no way other than being round and vaguely red. This moment of weakness was followed by another- excess (cream) and the result was that two wrongs made a very delicious right. 

A little time in the oven helps lackluster produce tremendously. Plums dull eaten out of hand can be delicious in a pie, and pale, watery tomatoes find sugar and depth through a slow roast. I halved them and put them snugly in a baking dish, added handfuls of fresh herbs and some slivers of garlic, and plenty of salt and pepper.

For this dish we'll need:

5 or 6 enormous tomatoes

2 or 3 cloves of garlic

fresh herbs to taste- here we used sage and oregano

salt and pepper

later:

200 ml cream- 15% fat is fine

a handful of grated parmesan cheese

Fresh sage and oregano do well in their pots on the balcony and are both nice with tomatoes.

Two wrongs may make a right, but three do not. I will lavish cream on a formerly bland tomato to make it luscious, but turning on the oven for an hour plus just to rescue some cheap and bland tomatoes? That would just be sending good money after bad. I waited for a time when the oven would already be hot with something savory, and just slipped these in on the top rack:

The chicken and potatoes with lemon and herbs won't mind the extra moisture in the oven.
Bread, for instance, would make a less tolerant oven mate.

After almost an hour, much of the water had been shed and concentrated into a rosy juiciness, the garlic had roasted, and the tomatoes withered and more meaty and substantial:

The oven and the herbs have coaxed all kinds of sweetness and flavor out of the tomatoes. But they are still not a dish- they are just a sweeter better tasting component, and a pretty liquid one at that.  

Pouring cream over the hot tomatoes is what makes it a dish. Liquid on liquid seems to tighten it up- does the acid in the tomatoes maybe curdle the cream? Anyway pour the cream on the tomatoes and top with the grated parmesan and broil it on the top rack just until it makes a bubbly crust- probably not but 5 minutes.

We all love our roast chicken, but with the bread I threw in the oven at the last minute to crisp up, the juicy creamy tomatoes were the first thing to go.