Oven-dried tomatoes

Last spring, I bought a tiny Roma tomato plant in front of the Payless drugstore. It was sickly looking all summer, but in the end gave us pounds of meaty, dark red tomatoes. Go figure. I picked the last of them a few days ago, and since I finally put away my canning paraphernalia (good riddance till next year) I thought I'd try oven-drying. Of course, you can find complicated recipes on the Internet that make this sound harder than it needs to be. Over in the Methow Valley, Amanda dries her produce in what amounts to a wood box with a light-bulb. Surely I could do the same in my gas oven?

So, I sliced them in half and laid them out on parchment paper. No salt, no oil.
Set at the lowest temperature, they looked like this in about 2 hours. I turned them over and left them alone for another 4 hours. Eventually they were caramelized and so, so sweet. Like a highly concentrated essence of tomato flavor.
And they're delicious in many recipes-- it would be hard to imagine cooking without tomatoes.
I boiled some orzo pasta, and sautéed a little garlic in olive oil. Then I mixed the pasta in with the chopped tomatoes and fresh Parmesan:

Simple and tasty...