In mid-August, I start to get overwhelmed by tomatoes. No mere Caprese salad or tomato sandwich is going to help me use up the 12 pounds taking over my dining room table. This time of year calls for drastic measures for reining in tomato sprawl.

One thoroughly satisfying technique is roasting tomatoes, a process that not only concentrates the sweetness and flavor, increases the shelf-life, but also looks fabulous doing it. I think a large pot of tomatoes simmering in olive oil and herbs is a true thing of beauty. Michael Chiarello has excellent recipes for roasted tomatoes which get chopped up for a salsa and also a great Roasted Tomato Soup.

I also love oven-dried tomatoes, where you dehydrate the tomatoes in a 200 degree oven for about five hours until about 80% of the moisture has evaporated. The finished product is sweet, salty, slightly chewy and has a tomato-on-steroids flavor. Oven-dried tomatoes will last, layered in a jar with olive oil and herbs, for a couple of weeks in the fridge, unless you eat them all straight out of the jar first (which is a distinct possibility). Use them in any dish where you want a hit of tomato flavor or color.

This weekend, I roasted up a bunch of vegetables and made Chilled Red Pepper and Tomato Soup. This soup was so gorgeous at every stage that I felt compelled to keep photographing it. The other cool thing about this soup is that it can really only be made in August — any other month, the cost would be prohibitive (especially after I doubled the recipe) and the flavor would be drastically diminished. There's no liquid added to this soup — everything comes from the tomatoes.

What are some of the ways you deal with tomato overload?

Before going into the oven

After roasting

Finished bowl of soup

Chilled Red Pepper and Tomato Soup with Cucumber Herb Salad

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 hot chile pepper, such as Thai or jalepeno, halved and seeded
Handful cilantro
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
1/2 bulb fennel, coarsely chopped
3 red bell peppers, seeded and coarsely chopped
2 1/2 pounds ripe tomatoes, coarsely chopped
2 teaspoons sea salt

Garnish with chopped cucumber, halved cherry tomatoes, red and yellow pepper strips, fresh basil, mint and cilantro leaves, and extra-virgin olive oil

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Combine the olive oil, garlic, chile pepper and cilantro in an ovenproof pot and cook over medium heat until the garlic is golden brown, about 5 minutes. Add the onion and fennel and cook until softened, about 10 minutes. Then add the bell peppers, tomatoes and salt. Stir well and transfer the pot to the oven.

Bake, uncovered, stirring every 10 minutes or so, for 30 to 40 minutes until the contents have collapsed into their own liquid and appear scorched on top.

Remove the soup from the oven and allow it to cool for 20 minutes.

Ladle the soup in batches, into a blender or food processor and puree until smooth. Pass the puree through a food mill or sieve. Discard the solids and refrigerate the soup for at least 3 hours.

Ladle soup into chilled bowls, top with the fresh garnishes and drizzle olive oil over it all.

Serves 4

Adapted from Keep It Seasonal, by Annie Wayte