Home grown tomato tips

This is less of an actual recipe list more of a handful of ideas of dealing with lots of ripe tomatoes, as this has been a bit of a bumper year.

  One of the simplest ways to serve fresh yummy tomatoes is this:

Thinly slice some large ripe tomatoes and arrange on a dish, sprinkle with finely chopped or mashed garlic and basil, drizzle with your favourite vinegar, I love balsamic at the moment, and finally drizzle with some tasty oil like olive or hemp. This will keep in the fridge for a couple of days, but best eaten quickly with mixed salad and locally cured hams.


  Another easy way of getting through the crop and adding to the winter stores is to freeze or bottle the reduced tomato pulp, the simplest way is to pile a load of chopped ripe tomatoes (you can add herbs, chillies, courgettes....) into a slow cooker, cook covering it till it's mushed down and then take off the lid so it can simmer away quietly till it's nicely reduced. Then strain with a sieve, and work the rest of the mush through the sieve with a wooden spoon, till you are only left with the skins and pips, put the skins and pips on the compost heap and bag up the strained pulp and freeze! Ready for winter stews and soups, curries and all sorts.

   Bottled tomatoes are also very useful for cooking throughout the winter and tomato-less spring, a lot of the modern tomato varieties have lower acid content than their forbears so a little citric acid or lemon juice is added. 

  Method:
  boil some water in a saucepan and dunk your tomatoes, using a slatted spoon, for around 60 seconds and then dunk in a jug full of cold water, the skins should slip off.
  core the skinned tomatoes and place in a sterilised pint preserving jar. Add a pinch, around 1/8 teaspoon of citric acid per pint jar, or 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice. You can also add 1/4 teaspoon of salt but it isn't necessary.

  Fill the jar to 1/2 of an inch from the rim with boiling water. wipe carefully around the top of the jar.
Put on your sterilised lid and place in a boiling water bath for 40 mins.

 Remove from boiling water bath and allow to cool before labeling and storing in a cool dry place.