Tomatoes
Whether you grow your own, pilfer them from next door or simply buy them in the shops – UK tomatoes are at their very best this month, they are also at their most abundant so you should be able to grab a bargain – but whatever are you to do with them?
“Whilst the lovely autumnal tomatoes won’t be around for long they can be preserved and there are many ways to do so. I like to make soups and sauces and freeze them, I also like to ferment cherry tomatoes with Asian seven spices and my mate Bill makes the most wonderful green tomato chutney – ill see if I can prize the recipe off him…. My ultimate favourite though, and one that suite. The ESSE range cooker perfectly, is the oven dried tomatoes routine. This is a version of the way we used to make them at River Cottage Canteen, when I used to have hair and more energy, which I think is based on an old favourite of the River Café version that I used to make at Alistair Little’s in Notting Hill even further back in the day when I didn’t even realise I had hair and energy was crystallising out of the air and straight into my cooking. Enough day dreaming of active follicles, on with the cookery.”
Oven dried tomatoes with basil, and a stove top toastie there of…
I tend to do these in the bottom oven of the ESSE with the vent open and the best thing to do is to pop them on overnight, just don’t forget that they are in there – start on 160 for the first hour or two then turn it down to 120 and just forget about them till the morning – you can also pop them on in the morning and take them out in the afternoon – you get the picture…
Ingredients
- Around a kilo and a half of well ripe tomatoes
- A few leaves of basil
- A clove or two of garlic
- A glug of good olive oil
- Salt and Pepper
- A well trusted ESSE baking tray and a something else to do for a while
And later on you might want
A couple of slices of your daily bread, and some fine cheddar style cheese. A little pesto if you fancy it or some harissa paste of you like things spicy
Method
- To begin with you will need to cut up your tomatoes – you can cut them into eighths, or quarters or even halves – just remember the larger they are the longer they will take to dry out (due to the reduced surface area caused by cutting them less) – and try not to have too much of a variance in size of cut tomatoes across each batch you make so you don’t get too many really dried ones and too many not quite dried enough ones.
- Place you cut tomatoes onto an ESSE baking sheet skin sides down as far as possible, drizzle with a little olive oil and season well with pepper and a little salt. Tear a few leaves of basil and scatter a that around with the tomatoes and slice a large clove of garlic very thinly and place a little of that on top of each piece of tomato too.
- Pop these in the bottom oven of the ESSE with the steam vent open on 160 degrees for 1 hour or so then turn the heat way down to 120 and basically do your best to forget about them for at least 6 hours. You can check them every now and again if you like.
- Once you are happy they are ready – they will have lost around 60% of their moisture and will be starting to look a lot like sun dried tomatoes you might buy in the deli, you can remove them from the oven or just turn the oven off and leave them there for another little while if they want a smidgeon longer.
- Take them out of the tray and place them in a clean jar or tub, add a drizzle more olive oil and any oil and reduced tomato juice from the baking tray should be scraped into the jar along with them. These lovely rich and salty but sweet tomatoes will now keep quite happily in the fridge for weeks on end – they won’t last that long though! They are a delicious addition to a salad or pizza or risotto, even chopped and tossed through your roasties on a Sunday to elevate that particular dish just another small notch, they work very well in a salad with roasted squash, walnuts, rocket and sheep’s curd… I will leave the details to you BUT you might want to consider a stove top toastie.
Ingredients
- A silicon baking sheet or a piece of baking parchment or, if you are like me, a devil may care attitude towards your cooking plate on your ESSE stove top.
- A few slices of good cheddar type cheese
- A few of your dried tomatoes
- 2 chunky slices of your daily bread
- Butter
Method
I won’t labour the point here, you all know fine how to make a toastie I’m sure, but I do like to butter the outside and season with salt and pepper, cook them on the stove top – it’s worth dropping the lid down too just to help trap some heat and give them a little squeeze too – watch out you don’t squeeze too much cheese out and start a smokey catastrophe!
Tim Maddams is a chef, food writer and cookery teacher who produces seasonal recipes for ESSE at his home in Inverness using ingredients grown in his kitchen garden. ESSE first met Tim over ten years ago when he regularly co-featured in the hit TV series River Cottage. During his time as head chef at River Cottage Tim pioneered ethical, local, seasonal produce and became a key spokesperson in the area of responsibly-sourced food.
Tim’s aim is to show off the “tremendous versatility” of the ESSE 600 X electric range cooker. The new 600 X has ESSE’s classic heat storage construction, patented ovens, beautiful colour finishes and the reassuring ‘solidity’ with modern, electric controllability and responsiveness.
