Last night was full of culinary victory in my house. In addition to successfully making homemade mozzarella cheese, I successfully, and tastily, preserved some beautiful cherry tomatoes by oven-drying--a variation on sun-dried tomatoes.It has become more and more important to me to gather up as much of the fresh, in-season produce from local farms. But to have it sustain us beyond it's limited window of edibility is always a challenge. Either the produce sits in the fridge too long, or on the counter. Life happens. My intention for veggie-heavy meals get lost in shuffle, when nights get late before we've even started cooking, and we often forego the second side of veggies for some other leftover. (Or we fill up on tomatoes on herbed and olive-oiled baguette slices, which is becoming more and more a pre-dinner treat that we love.) Or instead of finding their way into fresh smoothies, peaches grow soft on the counter as I spend what seems like every waking minute prying non-food items from Thora's jaws, or keeping her this side of melt-down, from a log-rolling tantrum. Needless to say, all my Monday-Morning-Farmer's-Market hopes for healthy, responsible, globally-sustainable eating sometimes goes by the wayside, or specifically into the the compost bin. But because I hate that sense of failure as I drop the wilted greens or squishy fruit in with the compost that not every bite got eaten, I've been eye-ing the produce at the Farmer's Market with specific thoughts of semi-preserving. (I'm not canning, so the preserving I'm doing here extends the lifespans of the produce by several weeks in the fridge, rather than months on the shelf.)
So last night's success was oven-dried tomatoes. I cut in half about 1/2 pint of cherry tomatoes, scooped out their seeds with a grapefruit spoon, and laid them cut-side up on a foil-lined baking sheet.(Could these look more like candy?!?)
I put them in a 200 degree oven (the lowest setting on ours) at roughly 10:30pm for what I was thinking might be over night. But at around 12:30am, when I was still up (!), I took a look at them, and they were already shriveled and some quite leathery. So I took them out and put them in a heat-safe bowl. (I will soon be pouring boiling liquid on them, so the bowl needs to be tough.)Then I referred to the recipe in Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, called "Antipasto Tomatoes," which can be found at their website here. I brought about a cup of plain white vinegar to a boil (just what we had on hand and a quantity that I eyeballed and assumed to be enough to cover my small amount of tomatoes). After it came to a boil, I poured it into the bowl over the dried tomatoes, tossed in a few whole cloves of garlic, and let the tomatoes and garlic steep for 10 minutes. Then, I scooped out the tomatoes and garlic from the vinegar and, by pressing them, drained as much of the vinegar off as I could. (I reserved the vinegar that is all carmel-colored and tomato- and garlic-infused now and sure to be good in some new incarnation.) Once drained, I tossed the tomatoes and garlic with dried basil, oregano, rosemary, and thyme. (I used dried since I didn't have fresh herbs on hand, but would surely use fresh if given the option.) I put them into a jar and poured olive oil over them to cover (see top photo).
I tried some this morning, and they're quite yummy. There's still a subtle vinegar hit to the taste, which I'm not sure I want there or not. The vinegar bath helps raise the acidity so as to help prevent the bacteria that causes botulism, so it's necessary. But perhaps I could've pressed harder when draining and gotten more of the vinegar out before they went into the jar. But I think they will be nice on salads, on crusty bread, or tossed with pasta. I plan to get some plum tomatoes on Monday and do this again, for one reason, that I'd like to try again and see what happens with a meatier tomato--one that has more substance to it after it's been seeded--but ultimately, I have a feeling these won't last long.
Next up: Roasted Red Peppers
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