Cheery cherry tomatoes

Our usual Saturday walk down Walthamstow Market seemed to take forever this week with all the disruption from Thames Water digging up the road. But there were lots of bargains on offer, strawberries are flooding in at 2 or 3 punnets for a pound, the boxes of honey mangos are arriving – £5 at the moment, and big bags of oranges were only £2 – cheaper than cartons of juice from the supermarkets.

But we were after tomatoes – and we got 4 punnets of ripe cherry tomatoes for £1 – you won’t find a deal like that in Sainsburys! I wanted to make sunblush tomatoes – the delectable Italian semi-dried tomatoes. This is such a simple recipe that I’m almost embarrassed to share it, except that they are so tasty and versatile that it would be a shame if you didn’t try them. Great added to rissotto, pasta sauces, salads and soups.

You need:

500g cherry tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
2-3 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp sugar

Method:

Preheat the oven to it’s lowest temperature setting. Remove the stems from the tomatoes and cut them in half along across the middle. Place cut side up in a single layer on a baking tray. Sprinkle with the salt, oregano and sugar. Drizzle over the olive oil and pop them into the oven.

Baking the sunblush tomatoes

Cook for 3 hours, until the tomatoes are soft and fragrant.  Once they’ve cooled, store in a jar in the fridge covered in olive oil. They will stay fresh for at least 2 weeks, but they taste so good they may not last that long!

Jar of homemade sunblush tomatoes