Tomatoes and sundries

I've always felt that tomatoes are in the blood. A century ago, my great-grandad Jarvis returned from the trenches of the First World War to grow tomatoes on his native Isle of Guernsey. During the Second World War, his family (including my Nan) were evacuated to Stockport - but there was no room on the evacuation boats for young men. He survived the Nazi occupation by growing greenhouse tomatoes and fiddling with a crystal radio. 

I've always loved the bittersweet aroma released when you nip out sideshoots or touch the stem. It's unique to the tomato plant, and it gives me a moment of nostalgia for the summer before, the first time I smell it each spring. 

As a culinary antidote to last year's gutsy beef tomatoes, this year I decided to grow 'San Marzano', an Italian plum variety, marketed for its sweetness and flavour. Not only would they be delicious to cook with - they would also have curves.

But every season gives you gluts of one kind or another, and soon you find yourself with more tomatoes than a person should reasonably know what to do with. This heralds the vegetable gardener's perennial problem: storage. The main option, apart from freezing, is to preserve the glut in an environment hostile to bacterial growth - so sugar, vinegar, salt or alcohol.

However, there are two more options which have great potential: drying (dehydrating) or preserving in oil are easy alternatives, and really versatile when you come to return your veg to the pot.

So I decided to combine the two and make sundried tomatoes in olive oil. I used the recipe for 'Slow-dried tomatoes in oil' from Pam Corbin's excellent Preserves title in the River Cottage Handbook series as guidance - but it's really not rocket science and is a variation of techniques used as long ago as the Aztecs. 

You slice the tomatoes in half and season with salt and caster sugar (and if you're me, pepper and herbs), and stand them face-up on a rack over a baking sheet for 20 minutes.

Turn them over so that they're facing innards-side down on the rack, still over the baking sheet.

Then place then into a preheated oven at 100°C for around 7 hours, or until the tomatoes have lost most of the body weight (but before they become crispy). This is the dehydration part of preservation.

Allow them to cool completely, then place then in a shallow bowl with white wine vinegar for 20 minutes, before spooning the tomatoes and a couple of tablespoons of the vinegar into a sterilised jar. Top up to 5 mm below the rim with extra virgin olive oil, then seal the jar.

Mr. Jarvis may well have been my tomato-growing great-grandfather, but Bob, as they say, is your uncle!