So recently we have been very lucky with the amount of tomatoes we have been getting from our greenhouse....lovely when you want a fresh tomato for your salad....but in the amount s we've been getting I can't eat that much salad!!!....so ....what to do with them. I'm a BIG fan of tomato sauce based dishes....spag bol and the like so the first and foremost thing for me to make was a batch of roasted tomato sauce. I preheat my oven to 160 fan (which would probably be about 180 on a regular oven, gas mark 4) and I line my baking tray with foil. The first thing I do is to remove the core ( I can't stand getting the core of a tomato in my mouth !!) I found this little gadget in a store (can't remember which store but you can buy them on Amazon Link here, they are meant for hulling strawberries but are just as effective in removing the core of a tomato.
I then place them in a bowl and pour boiling water over them, I leave them for 30 seconds and then run cold water over them to cool them so that they can be handled, the skin simply slips off. I then cut them in half, place them on the baking tray and put them in the oven. They can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour so I leave them for 30 minutes and then just make sure I keep checking them every 10 minutes until they are nicely roasted down but not burnt. I then remove them from the oven and let them cool down. When they are cool I put them in batches into my mini food copper and whizz them into a paste, this will be a thick and luscious consistency which you can use in any of your tomato based sauce dishes, I think you could also use it as a base on your pizza although I haven't tried that yet. This sauce is in the centre picture on the left.
So then I had another batch of tomatoes come in and had only just made the sauce so felt that I should maybe explore other options. I posted on my WW fb page and someone made the suggestion of making tomato chutney, I thought "What a great idea"....so I began looking at recipes and found this one Link Here. It isn't a very complicated recipe to be honest its just chucking everything into pan really but I tweaked this recipe for two reasons....the first one is that it includes garlic which I usually leave out of foods because hubby and I eat different foods and the second one is obviously there is a lot of sugar in a chutney which doesn't fit with my WW life.
Tomato Chutney
Ingredients
Then the next batch turned up so I made passata Link here....this made 800ml of passata (it is the picture on the left above) which I have frozen in 200ml portions. When I made this passata I followed the recipe but I felt that when it was finished it was too thin to put on a pizza so my plan is that depending on what I am using it for I will decide if it needs to be reduced down (by boiling it).
....and finally my hubby went out yesterday and cleared the last of the tomatoes out of the greenhouse (!!!!) so my last outing with the tomatoes was....good old home made tomato soup (the picture on the right above. Back to google and this recipe from the BBC Good Food website Link here. This recipe was only for two portions and that meant that the ingredients didn't reach the minimum level in my soup maker so I made double the quantity (lets face it....I had the tomatoes !!!!) I didn't tweak this recipe at all although I did add a tablespoon of half fat creme fraiche before serving to give it a creamy consistency......absolutely stunning recipe.
Hope some of these ideas have given you some inspiration.
Lets stay strong guys
Sue x
