Drying: Fruits and Vegetables

Sun-drying of most fruits is easy in warm, dry climates if there is no objection to the fruit becoming brown or black, as is considered normal in raisins, prunes, and figs. Dried figs were a main article of the diet of ordinary people in classical Greece and Rome. In Arabia and N. Africa dried or partly dried dates are still a staple food.

Sun-dried tomatoes, formerly best known in the Mediterranean region (see Patience Gray, 1986, for an account of their preparation in Apulia and of how they can be stuffed), became fashionable as a speciality food in N. America and W. Europe in the closing decades of the 20th century.