Honorary Dish of the Day: Roasted Tomato Caprese Bites

Honorary Dish of the Day: Closing out our week with these bright and uniquely delicious Roasted Tomato Caprese Bites as our honorary dish of the day today! I was inspired to make this dish after watching an episode of Giada in Italy. Those who follow my blog regularly know just how much I love stuffed vegetable recipes...I have stuffed bell peppers, portobello mushrooms, and most recently zucchini 😍. So when I stumbled upon that particular episode, I was understandably very excited to learn that tomatoes be stuffed too and was eager to prepare this delightful side dish/appetizer. Although I followed Giada's recipe for the most part, I made some modifications of my own in my recipe:

• I love Campari tomatoes (similar to those used in her recipe), but decided to purchase some organic tomatoes that were slightly bigger to ensure they provided adequate space for the filling and remained stable when placed on the baking pan. 
• I used only 6 tomatoes so I used halved measurements of the ingredients needed. 
• Unlike the original recipe, I did not throw the valuable flesh out since I felt that would be wasteful. Instead, I turned them into a delicious homemade tomato cream sauce to pair with a different dish I had prepared earlier (more on this coming next week). 
• While I think Giada's tip on cutting a small sliver of the tomato bottoms for stability is a genius idea, I thankfully did not have to do so since most of my tomatoes were very stable! Only two of them seemed a bit unstable but I discovered that flipping the top sections to act as the base and cutting the wobbly bottom pieces out instead worked much better. 
• Finally, I preheated my oven to 425℉ instead of the recommended 450℉ because I was worried the tomatoes might collapse if I cranked the heat up too high. 

 I started out by cutting off the top portions and scooping out all the pulp and seeds into a small plastic container. I then placed them with their cut sections facing downward on an aluminum sheet lined with paper towels to allow them to fully drain out for about 20 minutes. Once done, I sprinkled each tomato with some salt, cut about 1-inch pieces of fresh mozzarella cheese, and placed each of them into the tomatoes. I then created the topping using wholewheat panko bread crumbs, 1/2 teaspoon each of dried oregano and basil, and 11/4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. I mixed these ingredients together and topped each tomato using a small spoon. I baked these stiffed tomatoes for 10 minutes at 425℉. While they turned out great, I think I will experiment with additional spices and different cheese next time to take the flavor a notch higher. I highly recommend these simple but delicious tomato mozzarella bites and hope you give them a try sometime. Enjoy!😍😋