roasted tomatoes with white beans

Is July the most lethargic cooking month? I don’t mean this in a bad way. I know in our productivity-fixated culture (“so busy, crazy busy”) we balk at praising apathy but what if we leaned into it instead? It’s hot. The days are long. If midsummer demands some laziness, some loosened grip on to-do lists, if de-participation beckons and we can pull it off, I’d like to try it. I could even schedule it one day next week if I move some things around.

Fortunately, there’s almost no reason to make any herculean cooking efforts, not when gardens and farm stands are overflowing with things good enough to eat without intervention, like heavy, sweet cherry tomatoes. If I am going to turn on the oven, however, it will be for this. This uses a pound of tomatoes and it’s one of my favorite summer meals of all time. These aren’tslow-roasted cherry tomatoes, the kind that semi-dehydrate and turn almost into tomato candy. They’re quick-roasted with olive oil and garlic until bubbly and otherworldly. The salty juices concentrate in the oven into a glorious rough sauce for the beans to roll around in and drink up. I finish it with a handful of basil.

While you can, and probably will, eat directly from the baking dish, it makes the most amazing crostini,ladled warm over pieces of toasted bread. You can tinker with the flavors here almost endlessly: add briny things like anchovies, capers, or cured black olives; add prepared pesto instead of fresh basil, finish with parmesan, pecorino, or even burrata. But I promise that if you only make it with tomatoes, garlic, beans, and basil, you will not feel that you’re missing a thing.