Whether large or small, red or yellow – fresh tomatoes can be used to create numerous delicious dishes, from light summer salads to hearty oven-baked casseroles.
Peppers stuffed with minced meat or rice and baked with plenty of cheese are probably one of the most classic oven dishes in German cuisine. But did you know that even larger tomatoes are best hollowed out, filled with plenty of stuffing, garnished with a little grated cheese and baked in the oven until golden brown (picture 1)? In addition, the vegetables can not only be stuffed with rice, but can also be mixed with the cooked grains in a pureed state. This is also demonstrated by the wonderfully aromatic Greek tomato rice (picture 2).
Although the vegetable can be enjoyed all year round, tomatoes are probably the ideal basic ingredient for all light summer dishes. Especially if you don't feel like cooking in the sticky kitchen on hot days, a handful of cherry tomatoes and a ball of mozzarella can be quickly sliced and dressed. This unusual tomato mince offers a refreshing new interpretation of the Italian starter (picture 3). You can bake a crispy tomato tart almost as quickly with a roll of ready-made puff pastry and some sour cream (picture 4).
Even though a jar of purchased tomato sauce can be quickly unscrewed and mixed into cooked pasta, you can cook a homemade tomato sauce like the Italians make in no time at all using just a few ingredients (Image 5). This can be used for more than just pasta of all kinds. Fresh gnocchi are also best cooked in a creamy tomato-mozzarella sauce (Image 6).
If you're tired of eating a traditional tomato sauce, you should definitely try this lightning-fast 5-ingredient pasta with fruity cherry tomatoes and baked feta (picture 7). And have you ever cooked spaghetti al dente directly in the tomato sauce instead of in salted water? If not, you should definitely try it, because many pasta lovers would probably walk over dead bodies for these crispy fried killer spaghetti (picture 8).
In addition to spaghetti, penne and fusilli, you can also serve juicy meatballs (picture 9) and shakshuka – also sunken eggs with peppers and feta cheese (picture 10) in a creamy tomato sauce.
