Tomatoes can surely teach us a thing or two about patience. Lately I’ve been tempted by the tease of a “seasonal tomato plate” on menus and displays at farmers markets. And as irresistible as it sounds, hold your horses folks, it ain’t time. It’s going to be a couple warm weeks until we can truly enjoy the best gift of summer. Totally worth the wait.

If you’re looking for a creative shortcut to enjoying tomatoes early, I highly recommend slow roasting them in the oven for a side dish, pasta sauce or appetizer (recipe coming soon). But, this takes patience too. It takes at least an hour and a half to slow roast grape tomatoes until they are perfectly sweet, full in shape but ready to surprisingly burst in your mouth like candy. Totally worth the wait.

For a special side dish, drizzle with fragrant truffle oil. You’ll only need a touch to immediately smell this dish from across the kitchen.

Roasted Grape Tomatoes with Truffle Oil

• 1 or 2 pints of grape tomatoes
• 1-2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper
• truffle oil

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Toss grape tomatoes on a baking sheet, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast the tomatoes for an hour and a half. Until tomatoes start to wilt but don’t completely deflate.

Remove from the oven and lightly drizzle with truffle oil until fragrant.  Serve warm.