Roasted Tomatoes and Cipollini

yet another smitten kitchen receipt that was fabulous. the tomatoes are so sweet and the flavors jump in your mouth. saltibocca! she was dead-on, it was very easy. i've been totally slovenly today. instead of hauling to jacksonville, we went out to dinner last night with tim and mary at sheehan's after bistro with karin and laurie.
this morning? leisure to the point of sloth, while david got up at five to work all morning at ft gordon. he called to say let's go to a late lunch, so i made this (english muffins worked fine)and since it's to be served right out of the oven, for the last ten minutes of cooking at 375, i put the oven on 175 till he got home.

served it with chicken salad I had made with roasted boneless chicken thighs that had been cooked with bleu cheese and breadcrumbs and rosemary and marinated in lemon/mustard. bound it with leftover sundried tomato dip elizabeth had made for a meeting at my house on thursday, to which was added chopped celery, apple, green onions and toasted pecans, thinned with lemon juice, and served it on arugula. easy. good.


Serves four as a small dish, two as a main

1 pound cipollini onions
1 pound small Roma or large cherry tomatoes
1/4 cup olive oil
Coarse salt
4 slices of country or ciabatta bread, one-inch thick
1 15-ounce can of white beans, drained and rinsed or 1 1/2 cups cooked beans of your choice
Garlic clove (optional)
Few fresh basil leaves, slivered

Preheat oven to 375°F. Boil a small pot of water and blanche the cipollini for 10 seconds, then plunging them into cold water. Use a paring knife to make a small slit in each, and slide them out of their skins and outer layer.

Spread peeled onions and tomatoes in a roasting pan. Drizzle with olive oil and a few good pinches of coarse salt. Toss everything together until well-coated and roast in preheated oven for about 45 minutes, reaching in every 15 minutes with a spatula to roll the tomatoes and onions around to ensure all sides get blistered.

Just before you take the tomatoes and onions out, place your bread slices on the oven rack (or a tray, if you’re more refined than us) and let them toast lightly. You can rub the toasts with a halved garlic clove, if you like, while still hot. Use tongs to arrange toasts in one layer on a serving platter. Dump the white beans over the bread, and using a pot holder, scrape the entire contents of the tomato-and-onion roasting pan, still hot, over the white beans. Do not skimp on the juices that have collected, all of them — don’t leave any in the pan. They could make a religious person out of you.

Sprinkle the dish with the basil and eat at once.