One-Pot Tomato Chevre Confit

Before I dive into the delicious and easy one-pot world of confit, I want to apologize for the couple week lapse in posting, guys! It’s been a crazy whirlwind of housekeeping, gardening, shooting, writing, and digging myself out of an email pile since I got back from my trip to the UK a couple weeks ago. But now I am settled, much more caught up, and enjoying the beginning of tomato season. My plants are heavy with little green tomatoes on the verge of becoming ripe, and what better way to enjoy this delicious summery produce than by making a confit!

Confit sounds much fancier than it is, it basically means that you cook something in fat at slightly low heat for a long time. Traditionally this was done with duck and geese in French cooking, but I have a veggie version to share with you all today that involves fresh tomatoes, a whole lotta Vermont Creamery fresh chevre, olive oil, onions, garlic, salt, and pepper. Yep, those are all the ingredients involved—it is very *very* simple to make which is a large part of why I love making it so much. You just throw everything together in a big pot, toss it in the oven, and voila! Delicious confit.

As far as serving goes, it’s very versatile in that regard. My two favorite ways to serve it are either by tossing it with pasta and some additional fresh chevre for a main dish, or by spreading it on buttery toasts as an appetizer or snack. You could also serve it alongside a protein, like a roast chicken or pork loin, or alongside rice or some other grain to bulk it up and keep it veggie. Totally up to you! As for the flavor combos that come into play here, when you confit the tomatoes, it helps the moisture evaporate out of the tomato and all those little cells that were once filled with water are now filled with delicious olive oil, which takes the sweet and slightly tangy flavor of a ripe tomato and gives it a softened, melt-in-your-mouth texture. And when that olive oil also has creamyVermont Creamery chevre, onions, and garlic infusing their flavor into the mix, you’ve got the most flavorful oil, ever, that tastes good on pretty much everything. Hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did, and are soaking up that summer sunshine!

Side note: There are only two spaces left for my Croatia photography workshop that I wrote all about in my last post. You can read more and register here. Would love to have you join!

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One-Pot Tomato Chevre Confit

Course Appetizer

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 2 hours

Total Time 2 hours 15 minutes

Servings 6 people

Author Eva Kosmas Flores

Ingredients

Tomato Chevre Confit

• 25 ounces ripe tomatoes
• 8 cloves of garlic
• 8 ounces Vermont Creamery goat's cheese (crumbled)
• 1 3/4 cups extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon flake kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly cracked pepper
• 1 medium yellow onion (peeled and cut into eighths)

Serving Options

• 12 ounces dry pasta (prepared according to package directions)
• 4 ounces Vermont Creamery goat's cheese (crumbled)
• 1/4 cup fresh basil leaves
• 1 baguette (cut into 1/4-inch thick slices and toasted)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Cut the large tomatoes into sixths, medium tomatoes in half, and leave the small tomatoes whole. Toss the tomatoes with the garlic, chèvre, olive oil, salt and pepper and place in a large cast iron pot or cocotte. Arrange the onion wedges in the pan in the olive oil. Place the pan in the oven and bake for 1 hour, then raise the heat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and bake for 1 hour more.

2. To serve it as a main, toss it with the cooked pasta and 4 additional ounces of Vermont Creamery chevre and serve. To serve it as an appetizer, spread it on the toasted baguette slices.