Tag Archives: tomatoes

September 24, 2012

Wrinkly Peppers

Wrinkly Peppers is a disorder of the refrigerator. Common symptoms include a reluctance to open the salad drawer and a lingering sense of guilt. Associated disorders can include Wrinkly Tomatoes and Withered Basil.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I buy fruit and veg with the best of intentions, only to either forget or fall out with the idea that I had to use them up. So they sit in the fridge and look sad until I have to throw them out. We all know that wasting food is Not On, so when I contracted a mild case of Wrinkly Peppers again recently I decided to step up and not let the usual cycle commence. I had two and a half peppers and a few tomatoes in the same boat, all with slightly puckered skin and, in the case of the tomatoes, a slightly squishy feel to them. None of the veg was mouldy or smelled suspicious, it was just a bit old and, literally, past its salad days.

You can see what I mean here: that tomato looks like a balloon three days after a party, one that you’ve found down behind the couch after you thought all the cleaning up was done. Poor soul.

When I made oven dried tomatoes recently, it opened my eyes a bit to the sheer waste of throwing out any fruit or veg that could be preserved in this way. Even if these ones aren’t perfectly fresh to start with, what does it matter? They’ll end up wrinkled and dried anyway; if anything, this is an advantage. Using slightly over-ripe tomatoes means that you end up with a really powerful flavour in the end result; especially if you’re using tomatoes from the supermarket, the ‘ripe’ fruit can be watery and anaemic, so you have to wait until it’s practically fermenting to get any flavour from it, by which time it’s too sharp and maybe even a bit fizzy. I promise you that if you oven dry them, you will not have fizzy tomatoes.

I sliced up the peppers into long strips, and cut the tomatoes into two or three – they were quite a small variety. I drizzled them with basil oil and sprinkled with smoked salt, then mixed to coat everything in that heady combination of flavours.

I dried in the oven at 100C for an hour and a half, checking and turning as necessary to make sure everything dried evenly and nothing scorched too much. You don’t mind a bit of a charred edge but you don’t want full-on burnt flavours. At the end of the process, they looked like this:

A bit caramelised in places (especially the peppers) but generally still soft and sticky, and the smell? Wonderful. So fresh and fragrant – how could I have ever thought of throwing this out? I must have been mad. Now, what to do with them? Well, you could use them in frittatas, rice dishes, casseroles, sandwiches or bread dough. You could process them up to make a vibrant tomato and pepper puree for use in stews, soups, pasta sauce or humus. What I did was put the tomatoes in a jar and cover with oil, to use as I go along. The peppers I added to a pizza sauce, which you can see a sneaky peek at here:

It’s a quick sauce, the recipe for which goes as follows:

200g tinned chopped tomatoes
2 cloves smoked garlic
2 1/2 peppers, cut into strips and oven dried (not a great measurement, really…)
a tiny squeeze of umami paste (not even 1/4 teaspoon. This stuff is strong)
salt and pepper to taste

Put all the ingredients except salt and pepper in a food processor or blender, and process until as smooth as you like. I didn’t insist on it being perfectly smooth, leaving a few little scraps of pepper made for a more interesting sauce in my opinion. Taste and season.

I think a pizza sauce should taste good, of course, but not have too much going on. The addition of peppers elevates this one above your standard tomato sauce, which in itself is light years above the bitter tomato puree they tried to teach me to use as a pizza sauce when I was at school. Even then I knew something wasn’t right… The umami paste replaces the more common anchovy paste. You have to be careful with it, a little goes a really, really long way. It contains anchovies, tomatoes, parmesan and mushrooms for that deep, savoury flavour that some people call ‘umami’ and some would probably just call ‘salty’.

I’m currently developing a kick-ass pizza recipe, from dough to toppings. I’ll be giving you the recipe in installments, as I get each part right. The pizza sauce is good to go – and luckily this recipe makes enough for three or four pizzas, depending on size and on how much sauce you load on there. So, let us call it phase one of the Pizza Endeavour, and consider it a success.

12 comments | tags: cooking, drying, peppers, pizza, preserving, tomatoes | posted in Original recipes, Vegan, Vegetarian

August 1, 2012

Oven Dried Tomatoes

By Rock Salt

I was not ready for how amazing these tomatoes would be. I’m not a great fan of sun dried tomatoes, finding them really bitter and kinda on the wrong side of chewy. I thought I’d give these a go as an alternative, made a whole jar full and promptly finished them within the week, having some every single day on sandwiches, in a paella and through a pasta bake. I didn’t even come close to all the possible ways to use these up, either, so I’ll have to make them again. And again. And again… I’m trying to grow tomatoes at the minute (though I fear I may just have killed them off by trying to put them into an upside down planter) and I imagine that home grown tomatoes would add a whole other leve to an already awesome ingredient.

It’s not really a recipe, this, so much as a technique. You start by heating the oven to about 100C – a very low heat, for drying and not roasting. Then you get together about 500g of mixed tomatoes – depending on the size, this amount should fit on one baking sheet. I used cherry tomatoes, baby plum tomatoes and Jubilee vine tomatoes – pick whichever ones look and smell the ripest. Go ahead and smell the packets if you’re in the supermarket. They like that.

Thickly slice the bigger tomatoes and half any little ones. Drizzle them with olive oil, then sprinkle with a teaspoon of sea salt and a teaspoon of sugar.

Get your hands in amongst it and mix the tomatoes so they’re all coated in the oil, salt and sugar. Heat the oven to 100C and put the tomatoes in for an hour and a half to two hours, until they look like this:

A little charred round the edges, pleasantly smushy and smelling like a lycopenium daydream. Let them cool, then store in a clean jar, topped up and covered with olive oil. When you want to use them, lift them out and drain before popping them in whatever you’re having – they’re a great alternative to ketchup on hot dogs or relish on cold meats. They’d also be great through a cracker or bread dough. Lots of uses. As a bonus, you get some tomatoey olive oil into the bargain. It’s a win-win situation.

12 comments | tags: cooking, oven dried tomatoes, relish, tomatoes | posted in British food, Condiments, Dairy free, Gluten free, Snacks, Vegan, Vegetarian

August 25, 2011

Mozzarella, Ham and Tomato Bruschetta (or, Posh Cheese on Toast)

By Rock Salt

Do you ever have a craving for a food that just won’t go away until it’s satisfied? Sometimes I have food cravings so strong I can smell the food I want. It’s been like that for as long as I can remember, there’s no need for any raised eyebrows or suggestions of pregnancy, thank you very much. On the other hand, I am fascinated by pregnancy cravings, so leave me a comment and let me know what yours were or are!

I recently had a notion for really fancy cheese on toast, which involved granary bread, mozzarella, thinly sliced ham, fresh tomatoes and some of my own complicated pesto, which I was finding many uses for at that time, to justify having made a whole bowl of it when really I only needed a few spoonfuls. I couldn’t resist the urge and bought all the rest of the ingredients on my way home, and had cheese on toast for dinner.

It’s not really a recipe, this, but in case you’ve never made cheese on toast before (or toasted cheese, or grilled cheese, depending where you’re from) then here is my method. I started by putting two slices of granary bread under the grill (or broiler, which I think is a really strange word) until they were golden brown on one side and just soft and warm on the other. Then I took them out and turned them over, so that the toasted side was on the bottom, and put on my ingredients; in this case, a few slices of wafer thin ham then alternating slices of tomato and mozzarella. I’ve become one of those people who smells tomatoes before she buys them, now, and I must say that since I buy them in the supermarket I am more often than not left wanting when it comes to tomatoes that actually smell (and taste) like tomatoes. As of next month I resolve to shop at the farmers’ market twice a month, even if it’s just to get a little fruit and veg. I remember when I was small I had a tomato plant in my bedroom, and the minty smell from the plant was really intense, it hit you as soon as you walked into the room. I tried growing another one more recently but I don’t have green thumbs at all, it didn’t end well. Farmers’ market it is.

To the tomato and mozzarella I added a thin layer of pesto, then put the whole lot back under the grill for a few minutes until the cheese and pesto had melted together and the tomatoes were starting to shrug off their skins and get comfortable. I seasoned the bruschetta with black pepper and a pinch of salt, to bring out the flavours of the tomatoes. There you have it; posh cheese on toast. It doesn’t really look like much but it definitely hit the spot.