My Final Recipe of 2010

Only fitting that my final recipe for 2010 would be for a New Years Eve party. Looking for a good finger food appetizer I decided to make Ricotta-Stuffed Roma Tomatoes from one of my favorite blogs - The Kitchen Sink Recipes. I stayed pretty true to the recipe and if anything just made more than the original called for.

Ingredients:
- 30 small to medium sized roma tomatoes
- 2 cups ricotta cheese
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh chives
- 1 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1 tsp dried basil
- salt and pepper
- dried bread crumbs

Directions:
- Half and hollow out the tomatoes and drain of excess liquid and place on foil lined baking sheet, hollow side up.
- In a medium bowl, combine the ricotta, herbs, pepper flakes, salt and pepper.
- Using a small spoon, fill each tomato half with about a tablespoon of the ricotta filling so the tomato is completely filled creating a slight mound.
- Pour bread crumbs in a small, shallow bowl.
- Take the filling tomato half and invert it into the shallow bowl of bread crumbs, pressing lightly so the crumbs adhere to the ricotta. Place the tomato back on the baking sheet, bread crumb side up, and repeat with the remaining tomatoes.
- Roast for 15 minutes at 400 degrees F until the bread crumbs have browned and the tomatoes softened.

I ended up hollowing out the tomatoes and mixing the ricotta on NYE morning and then before I went to the party I filled the tomatoes, covered the baking sheet with lots of plastic wrap (which ended up blowing off anyway), and then roasted them at my friends house.

The final product was good, but I think they would've been better if I had prepared them immediately. The filling was delicious, though, something I might use for another recipe one day. It ended up being the perfect recipe to round out all the other food and was pretty easy. The hardest part was hollowing out the tomatoes, but I managed. It's really hard to find a recipe, specifically an appetizer type recipe, that you can prepare in advance so I think these worked out well!

And that's it. My final recipe of 2010, my final entry of this resolution. Wow! Final thoughts and recap to come...