Even though it’s mid-October, I am still picking tomatoes off my plants.  Yesterday I had an entire gallon-sized bag of tomatoes that I wanted to use up. So ripe, juicy and sweet- I knew  these tomatoes would likely be the last of the season and therefore needed to be used in a special dish. Earlier I had bought some wild salmon, fresh herbs, a sweet onion and some chanterelle mushrooms. Normally, I wouldn’t pair a delicate flavor like chanterelle mushrooms with rich salmon or tomatoes, but I was in a risky mood. What could those flavors be like together? Would the chanterelles get completely lost in the dish? I decided to find out.

I sliced about two cups of the tomatoes in half and gently coated them with olive oil, salt and pepper and fresh thyme leaves. Next I spread them out on a sheet tray and put them in the oven to roast. When sweet tomatoes are slow cooked, they get even sweeter. Candy-like actually. To really slow cook them, I would have had to cook them in a 200 degree oven for two hours, but most week nights don’t allow for that kind of time. So I put these in a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes and reduced the heat to 300 degrees and cooked them for another 10 minutes.

While the tomatoes were cooking, I sauteed the onions and mushrooms with olive oil, added some garlic, salt and pepper and a little more fresh thyme. Once the tomatoes were done, I added them to the mushrooms and onions. Then I seared the salmon separately, just to medium rare, with only olive oil and salt and pepper. I placed the salmon on a plate and covered it completely with the rich tomatoes, chanterelles and onions. For a second I was like, oh man, you took something so great and you wasted it by drowning it in sweet tomatoes! But you know what- it worked! Juicy-sweet layers of flavor capturing the end of summer and the beginning of fall in one dish.

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Possibly the most nostalgic smell from my childhood would have to be homemade applesauce. The apples usually came from apple trees in our yard or from my grandparent’s yard. Every fall a large bowl of multicolored red, pink and golden apples flecked with pocks and oftentimes worm holes, was common place in my mother’s kitchen.

I anxiously looked forward to the sound of the 1970’s red-handled apple peeler and corer grinding through the aromatic apples and watching it spray sweet and sticky apple juice on the counter and floor. After chopping and stirring, the heavenly smell of sauteed apples with cinnamon and brown sugar would coat the air. It would stretch and swell throughout the kitchen, creep into the hallways, living areas and even spread itself out onto the couch and weave its way into the fabric of our clothes. And before my dad would reach the front door of the house, the scent was already welcoming him home.

As we welcome fall, what better way to embrace it then with long lasting autumn flavors. Here is my mother’s ultra simple homemade Slow Cooked Applesauce:

Other fall recipes to try:

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