Peter Gordon

Oven-Dried Tomatoes

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Preparation info

  • Difficulty

    Easy

Appears in

A World in My Kitchen

A World in My Kitchen

By Peter Gordon

Published 2003

This is a good way of using up surplus tomatoes when the thought of another roast tomato, or fresh tomato salad, is too much to bear. You can dry them and, when cooled, keep them in olive oil in the fridge for 4–5 days. They won’t dry out totally, but will be firm and slightly chewy. They are good eaten with cold meats, cut up into salads, tossed with pasta or used to spice up a burger.

Ingredients

  • 4 large ripe tomatoes
  • salt and ground black pepper
  • caster sugar (if tomatoes aren’t very ripe)

Method

Preheat oven to 150°C/300°F/Gas Mark 2. Place a cake rack on a baking tray and heat in oven for a few minutes. Cut the top and bottom off tomatoes, then slice them into ½ cm(¼ in) thick slices with a sharp knife.

Lay them on heated rack, sprinkle with good salt (Maldon is my favourite) and cracked pepper. If tomatoes aren’t too ripe, sprinkle with a little caster sugar, too.

Place in middle of the oven and leave for 1 hour, then check. They should have firmed up, at which point you can turn them over and leave for another hour before removing from the oven. If they start to brown, turn heat down a little.

© 2003 Peter Gordon. All rights reserved.