Object Dart

I got an special request from Idiot/Savant the other day to post a recipe for semi-dried tomatoes. Luckily this is something I saw in the restaurants, and I know it’s easy as. It’s also extremely Frugal.

If you want a particular recipe shown in a step-by-step, just give me a yell and I’ll see what I can do. Within reason. Par-boiled yak might exceed by meagre skills…

In this case I used about 2ish kilos of tomatoes costing about $4, and 1kg of Rock Salt costing $1.50 (I used the rock salt twice, in two “shifts”). The real expense was probably running the oven for four or five hours. So all up we can assume this cost us about $6 or $7?

What I got from this was several hundred grams of semi-dried tomatoes. Considering that the “gourmet” tomatoes in the supermarket cost $7 for a smallish cryo-vac of 250g, this is a good deal.

Here’s what you’ll need.

• A kilo of Roma tomatoes. You can use any tomatoes, but Roma are the best because of their low acidity. They’ll end up sweeter and generally just, plain, extremely delicious.
• A matching weight of rock salt. This is generally pretty cheap.
• Fresh herbs, especially Thyme.
• A decent sized, sterilised jar to store them in.
• A large amount of oil, vegetable oil is ok, olive oil is best.

And that’s it. We’ve been tucking into these on bread, with cheese. But you can eat them in a myriad of dishes. (more…)