Linguini + Caramelized Tomato Oil

For the past few days I've been caramelizing tomatoes to bring over to friends' dinner parties. The process is simple, but takes a while. Fill an oven-safe dish with small, ripe summer tomatoes (campari, cherry, etc..). Add red wine vinegar and olive oil at a 1:6 ratio to at least half the overall height of the tomatoes. Add a spoonful of brown sugar (maybe half the amount of the vinegar? I didn't measure). Fresh thyme, salt and pepper round it out. Place in the oven for at least two hours at 275F.

linguini with caramelized tomato oil

The resulting globes of caramelized fruit collapse with the slightest amount of pressure, oozing sweet juices and eliciting all sorts of pleasurable noises and "omg summer." They went great on homemade pizza on Thursday. On Friday I reused the caramelizing liquid with more tomatoes to serve with steak (amazing) and that further intensified the flavors.

In my typical fashion, I reserved those liquids for another purpose and in my hungover state today, that purpose was linguini. Browned some garlic in butter, added the caramelizing liquid and reduced it to half. Tossed it with hot linguini pasta and chopped parsley. It was a little on the sweet side, so I added more salt and pepper, but my god did it taste amazing.