Before all the beautiful summer tomatoes quickly disappear, promise me you’ll make this! This is like the grand finale of tomato season for me, because soon we’ll be into the cooler weather, fall type foods, but I guarantee come mid January you’ll be dreaming about this like I do.
This combination was meant to be together, like yin and yang, the perfect match.
Creamy, light, fluffy and decadent, whipped ricotta slathered onto extremely crunchy bread and topped with the most intensely flavored slow roasted tomatoes, I can barely talk, it’s that good!
Ingredients: Great tomatoes, the best bread you can find and good quality fresh ricotta.
Normally when I roast tomatoes I put the oven on 400, toss them with olive oil and quick roast for around 15 or 20 mins, but this is a different process, there’s nothing quick about it, you’ll have to give up your oven for at least four hours.
The slow process is exactly why they taste so darn special, sort of like the difference between quick frying onions verses the slow process of caramelizing them, there’s no comparison in taste.
You want to get them to the point where most of the moisture is gone but yet they’re still a little moist and limp.
Now lets talk about the whipped ricotta, I like to call it Italian Hummus, you can dip it, spread it, whatever you like. I’ve been obsessing about it ever since I tasted droplets of it on top of a pizza this summer.
So simple to make, just place some good quality ricotta into a food processor or a mixer and blend it until it has a smooth and creamy almost fluffy consistency with no lumps at all, you might need a few drops of cream or half and half to help smooth it out. You can then finish it off by folding in some fresh herbs of your choice like, oregano, chives, basil, maybe a little parmesan cheese if you want, salt and pepper of course, and finally a nice drizzle of olive oil on top, just like hummus. I used chives and basil in mine but it’s a blank canvas so make it your own.
Pile it on some of the best bread you can find, toasted of course, then top it with those luscious tomatoes.
Honestly, you can make a meal out of this, it’s that good.
One bite and you’ll be hooked!
- great tomatoes
- fresh thyme
- garlic infused olive oil
- salt and pepper
- Heat oven to 250 degrees.
- Slice tomatoes about a ¼ " thick, if cut too thin they will turn out like chips.
- Place slices on a parchment lined baking sheet.
- Brush each slice just on the top with olive oil that has been infused with one small crushed garlic clove.
- Sprinkle with salt and pepper but be easy on the salt because it intensify's as it roasts and you don't want it to taste overly salty.
- Spread fresh thyme leaves all over.
- Place in oven and roast at that temp for 1 hour then reduce oven temp to 200 until tomatoes lose most of their moisture but are not completely dried out.
- Mine took a total of 4 hours.
- Store them single layer in an airtight container, in the fridge.
I’m Marie, a wife, mother, mother-in-law, and gramma of two beautiful girls. My passion is food, clear and simple but especially Italian food, hence the name of my blog, Proud Italian Cook. I want you to feel right at home here so grab a cup of coffee, I’ll get the pastries, take a look around and enjoy your visit! {
Oh Mother of Mothers…..and I say this in the most respectful way! I just tasted my whipped Ricotta and it is “heavenly”! Is is okay to call whipped cheese heavenly???? Earlier, I tried the Ricotta (unwhipped), bread (untoasted) with the tomatoes roasted combo and it’s already a hit with me! Now that I have whipped the Ricotta, have the yummy bread ready for grilling, I can hardly stand waiting for the grande finale!
Thank you, thank you for sharing your recipe! Love, love, love your stuff!! Happy Eating! Cheri
Ha ha, love this comment Cheri!
This was fantastic, picked the tomatoes and herbs straight from the garden and put them to work. Thanks for the inspiration. My wife sent me this recipe and now that I’ve been shown what a great resource this site is, I can’t wait to try more stuff from here. Bravo!
Thanks so much Matt!
You are my inspiration! My friend gave me two dozen beautiful brown eggs from her new chickens and I had lots of great veggies from the CSA——-I roasted the tomatoes as you recommended and made a green pepper, onion and roasted tomato frittata and topped each piece with whipped ricotta. So very delicious! Thank you for the nudge in the right direction!
Made this recipe this past weekend using tomatoes from our garden and homemade ricotta….absolutely delicious!
Beautiful! I love whipped ricotta. It is one of those treats we indulge in all the time. Whether savory, as here, or zapped with some nice Pernigotti cocoa or instant espresso powder, Bart and I gobble it up and feel pretty darn good about it. After all, ricotta has more calcium than cottage cheese! What could be better? You photographs are, as always, utterly seductive. I hope you and yours are well and that you have all enjoyed a terrific summer. Love, ABC
My mouth is watering!
I am reading this recipe to my hubby and my mouth is watering sooooooo bad that I can hardly talk. I am absolutely drooling over this and doggone we are going on a trip and we had a container of fresh ricotta. We froze it 🙁 We have some home made ciabatta in the freezer. I could absolutely cry! Funny desserts don’t elicit this kind of response from me. Thank you for the inspiration! I can’t wait to make this. I would have added a few more stars to this recipe if I could. Buon fine settimana.
This sounds wonderful…I’ve been looking for an excuse to make ricotta and this is perfect!
OMG Marie…I so love ricotta smeared on bread!!! So perfect and lovely!!! Whenever I go to Devanti Enoteca in the city I always get their ricotta! It’s so fantastic!!! YUM! And those tomatoes! Perfection!!! I gotta make this!
Woman…This looks amazing! I have a weekend at the coast planned next month with great friends from college (I’ve known these folks for 30+ yrs)…I think I just found our featured appetizer! Wow, so fresh and simple. Love, love, love the fact that I can make it ahead and have a relatively quick yet elegant pre-dinner treat with a HUGE WOW factor! Beautiful photos, too. Nicely done, Marie!!!
Thank you Ellen, Honestly I think you and your friends will love it, yes make the tomatoes ahead of time and bring them along, you could probably do the ricotta too, just put it in a cooler and fold the fresh herbs in when your ready to serve along with the olive oil.
This looks fabulous Marie! My son gave me some delicious homegrown tomatoes form his tomato plants today, so I’d love to make this. I also lucked out with fresh eggs from his backyard chicken….yum! I made add a fried egg on top!
Looks like a piece of heaven!
I just mades some slow roasted tomatoes myself. Next on the list this amazing looking ricotta! THANKS
Karen
It is over 100 degrees here, but if it cools down this is on my list.
If it weren’t so hot out, I would do this now…I have plenty of tomatoes and I am so in the mood for this.
Maybe next week when it is cooler outside.
Oh man, Marie. Can I come over. Just seeing the photos and then reading the description has sent me drooling for those tomatoes. Tony is one lucky guy — and so are we now to have this wonderful idea from you for whipped ricotta and slow roasted tomatoes.