With plenty of heirloom tomatoes left over from the weekend, we decided to use them in Ina Garten’s Salmon and Melting Cherry Tomatoes, a dish we have never made before. Tony describes how incredibly simple it was.

This was definitely one of the easier dinners I’ve ever made. I was cutting the recipe in half, so prep was minimal: I chopped half a cup of Vidalia onion, minced one clove of garlic, and cut one cup of heirloom cherry tomatoes in half. Cooking the onions, garlic and tomatoes was as easy as prepping them. I cooked the onion for five minutes, the garlic for about one minute more, and the tomatoes for about 10 to 15 minutes after that, which was more than enough time to cook the salmon. I made one change at this stage, per Kim’s suggestion. She noticed that one cup of tomatoes really wasn’t enough and that the ratio of onion to tomato was pretty high. We hit on a simple solution and cut up the remaining tomatoes (about another cup) and added them to the pan. Per the recipe, I cooked everything until most of the liquid had evaporated and a sauce had formed.

I also deviated from the recipe when I cooked the salmon. Rather than searing the salmon in a pan and then moving the pan to the oven, I just roasted the salmon in the oven and then put it under the broiler for a couple of minutes. This was a very clean and easy approach, but the salmon didn’t come out as crispy on top as I had hoped. I’m always a little leary of using the broiler, as my typical experience tends toward “nothing’s happening, nothing’s happening, nothing’s happening…dammit it’s burned!”, so I usually take things out from under the broiler before I should. No harm done though, as the salmon, while a tiny bit overcooked for our taste, was fine. The tomatoes were the star of the show though. They were soft without being totally mushy and sweet without being cloying. Another great, simple dinner for Two at the Table!