1 pint cherry tomatoes
1 clove garlic, sliced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon fresh basil, chopped
salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Drizzle tomatoes with a combination of garlic, olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper and pour into an ovenproof dish.
3. Roast tomatoes until they pop and slightly blacken, then remove them from the oven.
4. Drain tomato juices to a saucepan and bring to a boil, reducing to a syrup.
5. Remove syrup from the heat and combine with basil, season to taste with salt and pepper if necessary and combine with tomatoes.

Makes 2 servings

4 cloves roasted garlic
1 dried red chili, minced
1 scallion, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh basil, chopped
1 teaspoon harissa
3 tablespoons ranch dressing
2 chicken breasts, butterflied

1. Combine roasted garlic, chili, scallion, oil, basil, harissa and ranch dressing in a bowl.
2. Poke chicken breasts numerous times with a fork and then place in a bag with prepared marinade. Marinate overnight.
3. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
4. Remove chicken from the marinade, discarding any leftover, and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake until cooked through to the center, about 20-25 minutes. Allow to rest a few minutes before serving.

Makes 2 servings

1 medium avocado, halved, peeled and pitted
1 teaspoon soy sauce

1. Pour soy sauce into the hollowed out pit of the avocado. Eat with a spoon.

Makes 1 serving

I just started working nights again, which has previously totally messed up my schedule for cooking dinners (who wants to cook a dinner first thing in the morning?) and the city shut off my water, rendering me unable to do dishes and therefore actually cook anything. There has been a lot of road construction in this area and they're building a new condominium down the street, so it's not surprising, but I wish there were some sort of notice for this thing. On the bright side, I am a day behind with an excuse that doesn't involve me being lazy or making up excuses! A new first for A Food Year. It has also come to my attention that there's really nothing anywhere on the site indicating where I was behind and/or why, so I'm working on that.

As an appetizer, I had a very, very basic avocado dish that I am calling Suave-o-cado because it is really nothing more than soy sauce and avocado. Soy + avocado = suave-o-cado. Yes, I know, I am incredibly clever. Since salt is really the only ingredient you need to add to an avocado to make it palatable, soy sauce is a very good addition as a little pool where a pit once laid.

I'm not sure why, but tomatoes are really cheap right now (correct me if I'm wrong, but late October is not tomato season) so I picked up a pint of cherry tomatoes. Never knowing really what to do with cherry tomatoes, they sit around for a couple days going bad until I decide to throw them away. In this case, I made Roasted Cherry Tomatoes, which is a great way of intensifying their flavor.

Sticking with the roasted theme, I made Roasted Garlic Tunisian Chicken, which is probably the most American adaption of Tunisian cuisine possible, including the likes of ranch dressing and making harissa take a back seat like a simple ketchup. However, it pleased both Shannon and my taste buds and, aside from the misappropriate name, I was pretty well satisfied with this dish. This went very well with the roasted tomatoes as a sort of condiment.

The other accompaniment pictured is just cooked white rice, only I browned it slightly before adding chicken broth to give it a nuttier flavor. Some would say too nutty, since I totally forgot about it while surfing the internet and ended up burning half of it. The important thing is that it blurrily fits into the background to round out the plate.