This recipe was suggested to me by the Meatatarian, and since I like warm/hot tomatoes, I was game to try it. I'm glad I did.
A very straightforward recipe, this one. Not many ingredients and all I had to buy were the tomatoes since I am growing a tomato plant out back that refuses to produce any tomatoes as yet. With hindsight (and a full belly), I will be choosing more reasonable-sized tomatoes next time, not always the gigantic ones that are on sale. Not that there was anything wrong with the gigantic ones, but they take longer to heat through. Something to keep in mind. I was excited, however, to use some of the basil that has co-operatively been growing in the back. It is not the basil pot pictured in the photo above.
As far as modifications go, I guess you could call the gigantic tomatoes one of them. We gave our BBQ to my parents when we moved to Calgary last year so I had to put in a call on the batphone to my parents to figure out how to make this recipe in the oven. In the end, my mom reminded me I own a toaster oven which I used. I also didn't have a square foil pan so I ended up putting aluminum foil (into an improvised pan shape) on my toaster oven rack to contain the tomato mess.
Since my toaster oven is cute and small, and my tomatoes were gigantic, I could only bake two halves at a time. This gave me a chance to fiddle with baking times and temps. At first, I baked the halves at about 350 for 12 minutes which warmed the tomatoes through and melted the cheese. They weren't hot, but they were still good. For the second two halves, I baked them at 400 for 12 minutes, and to combat the tendency for the tomatoes to tip off their toppings, I hollowed out a section of each middle prior to topping them. It seemed to work pretty well along with propping them against each other in the oven.
When it came to eating my hot, gooey mess, my tomatoes seemed to slip and slide all over my plate. I cut them into pieces with a knife and fork, but I had to chase them around a bit. The cheese also had a tendency to fall off the tomato onto the plate so there was some scooping involved too. All in all, it was a hot, tasty meal with some entertainment value added. I will make it again!
