Tomatoes love salt and sun!

How lucky are we all in the UK? We have 4 diverse seasons a year, albeit sometimes off the scale and incredibly crazy but nevertheless they are all very different. With each season (spring, summer, autumn, winter) we enter the great choice of seasonal offerings in abundance. When you think of summer what comes to mind? For me it has to be sweet voluptuous tomatoes, copious amounts of wobbly wonky looking courgettes with their vibrant tipped flowers from my dad’s allotment and the most incredible softly foraged berries. How could you not love the changes of season? Granted our summers are hardly tropical, but still this year hasn’t been too bad, well not by our usual standards at least.

Anyway that’s enough gushing over why I love the seasons, that said and done I always dodge the UK’s hit and miss summer *laughs and escape for 2 weeks in the summer with my children. Guaranteed sunshine, food markets, fresh coastal fish markets and my body weight in cured meat, cheese and gelato. That along with long cold drinks and plenty of food with no set eating times. Oh how I love to pick all day with no particular curfew time.  That pretty much sums up my summer holiday. Two weeks pool and beachside is wonderful of course but my mind does hanker after more, I will not say I get bored because I was told recently only boring people get bored so it’s more that I prefer to keep busy and active. So I often set myself a holiday project. This year it was to sun dry seasonal tomatoes on my villa roof. I always sun dry tomatoes back in the UK but only using my plugin electrical dehydrator.

Sun dry tomatoes

The sun (obvs)

1 kilo Small seasonal cherry tomatoes

Coarse sea salt

Dried oregano or marjoram

Filippo Berio to dress – Extra Virgin Olive Oil

  • Halve the tomatoes and place them on a cooling rack or lined tray with the cut side facing upwards and plump bottoms down.
  • Take a piece of kitchen towel and pat the top of the tomatoes removing any surface juices.
  • Sprinkle the tomatoes with a little of the coarse salt.
  • Scatter over a pinch of oregano or marjoram.
  • Place the tomatoes in full sun for as long as possible each day.
  • When the sun goes to bed bring the tomatoes indoors until the morning.
  • Repeat the process for 3 days or until the tomatoes are fully sundried.

Factors that will affect the drying process are:

  • The size of the tomatoes.
  • The outdoor temperature.

Once dried. Dress with extra virgin olive oil and serve alongside a selection of antipasti dishes, squash in between a panino or spoon them into a sterilised jar, top with  Filippo Berio extra virgin olive oil and add fresh basil leaves. After sun drying tomatoes I also sundried courgette slices and pepper strips, in exactly the same way. I became totally obsessed but with the sun held daily at 33C I just had to take full advantage. Now back in the UK the temperature has steadily fallen to around 17C I am back to using my old faithful dehydrator machine. Same process but without a doubt the flavour isn’t as intense and sweet. Try something new and all I will say is enjoy and eat within the seasons.

 

This article was written for the Chronicle & Echo 07/09/17