Garden On, Vashon

My tomatoes have never finished so early. Usually I’ve had to pull all the vines—mostly the early slicer “Siletz”—in mid-October, even though they’re still full of orange and green fruit; I hang the vines upside-down in the guest bedroom with a tarp on the floor to catch the “rotters.” This year, I had all of two green tomatoes left in the tomato patch. What a great growing season… 

The last of the big red fellas are in a bowl on the kitchen counter, overripe and attracting fruit flies. Periodically I throw a big towel over the bowl to trap the flies, take the bowl outside, and snap the towel at the little buggers to shoo them away. The bowl goes back inside, and minutes later, they’re baaccckkk. They and the spiders are a sure sign the season’s winding down toward fall.

 I’ve sauced so many pots of toms this summer, I almost don’t care about the fate of these last toms. But since this IS my first blog and I’ve been writing about tomatoes in the Beachcomber from May on, I’ll use this first entry to try another personal first: sun-dried tomatoes.

 That’s OVEN, not SUN-dried

Okay, OVEN-dried—a more reliable method for cool Puget Sound Septembers. Michelle Crawford of Pacific Potager, well-known local tomato specialist, told me she has a friend in Texas who sun-dries tomatoes on the dashboard of her CAR. Hey, whatever works…

 Jasper Forrester of GreenMan Farm (www.greenmanfarm.com) got me thinking about trying these when she oo’d and coo’ed over how gooooood they are. Her recipe is below.

 The idea, I gather, is to make tomato raisins that you can freeze, reconstitute later in oil, then sprinkle onto pasta, risotto or pizza for a piquant reminder of summer past. Being cheap, I’ve never bought any, so it’ll be a new taste as well as an alternative way to preserve the garden bounty.

Testing the method and the tomatoes

The “Siletz” are seedless and without the juice of those locular cavities, so I should think they’ll provide a meaty chew. I also had some “Stupice” and “Sweet Chelsea” cherry toms on hand. To expand the experiment, I ran down to Pacific Potager and bought some heirloom “Black Paste” and hybrid “Juliet” ($3/lb): both are small paste tomatoes barely larger than a walnut.

Before breakfast, I halved all the toms, dug out the tiny cores with two short slashes of my paring knife, and with its point dug out the seeds I could reach. Half would marinate in Jasper’s balsamic vinaigrette for an hour; the others, I just salted and laid on the trays. Each group was laid in alpha-order, so that I could taste-test later and see which varieties worked best. I had one cooling rack that fit a small cookie sheet; I used a roasting pan with its slitted rack for a second batch. 

"Black Paste" on the left, "Sweet Chelsea" cherry tomatoes on the right, 1pm & 4pm

 While the marinating batch soaked over breakfast, my oven was heating to 200° (cooling, actually: I’d made scones for breakfast.) Ultimately I turned down the heat to around 175°: 200° just felt too hot.

 Both pans were in the oven by 9am.  I checked them at 1pm (top photo) and they were still a little wet, but wrinkled. Same at 2pm. By 4pm (bottom photo) they had the texture of chewed gum—wet and chewy— and were VERY tasty, bright with flavor. 

The next day I gave them two more hours in the oven, and honestly, I should have left well-enough alone. With two extra hours, they’d reached fruit leather stage: still good, but chewy enough to stick to the teeth. 

Flavor-wise, “Juliet” came out on top, followed closely by “Black paste.” “Juliet” had a sweet, berry note, while “Black paste” had a deeper sweetness more like raisins. “Sweet Chelsea” had a good flavor, but was still moist and could have used a couple extra hours drying time. “Stupice” hadn’t much flavor (a surprise as they’re so wonderful fresh), while the “Siletz” had turned into tiny rags of tomato jerky that clung to the rack’s thin rods and were a pain to pry off. 

All the samples came out sweet, but what really shot the flavor from a B to an A± was Jasper’s balsamic vinaigrette marinade. If you were making a pizza or pasta that was a little spartan—that needed a little flavor-zap—these marinated confettis would do the trick.

I pried all off their racks, laid them all flat on another cooky sheet to freeze individually, then stowed them in a zip-lock bag as per Michelle Crawford’s recommendation. Jasper’s recipe says, as do others, that you can also store the tomatoes in oil. They thaw quickly in a bit of oil, either in your cooking pan or in enough olive oil to cover in a small bowl.

Though I haven’t found the Ultimate Recipe for using these oven-dried tomatoes, I CAN say that they work best tossed into a dish toward the end. Too much cooking just breaks them up—you’ll get a subtle tomato infusion throughout, rather than individual tomato zaps. So far, I’ve found them very flavorful between a fried egg, sunny-side up, and a toast or vegetable base. (see update on the Zucchini Pancake, September 29)

If you’ve got a favorite way to use sun-dried or oven-dried tomatoes in your cooking, share it with us via the comments section.

Again, thanks to Jasper Forrester of GreenMan Farm for the following recipe.

 GreenMan Farm Oven-Dried Tomatoes

This recipe calls for 16-20 hours in a regular kitchen oven.  It also works great with an electric dehydrator (use according to manufacturer’s directions).  And if we have a nice sunny hot spell, it would work fantastic in a solar dehydrator.

Trim the stem ends off the tomatoes, quarter lengthwise and remove seeds.  Place in a large, nonmetallic bowl and add the olive oil, vinegar, & parsley, mixing well.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Cover bowl and allow to marinate in refrigerator for 2 to 3 hours. (Karen’s note: I marinated for 1 hour.)

Preheat oven to 200F.  Place tomatoes in a single layer on a baking sheet.

Bake for 16 to 20 hours (see my notes below).  Ideally, the best time to place them in the oven is around 7 PM and bake them through the night. 

(Karen’s note: mine took considerably less time, and the marinated tomatoes were only a tiny bit moister— 7-9 hours. I DID soak up excess marinade, halfway through the drying process, by touching a paper towel to those areas still overly wet. A good judge of doneness would be, are they the texture of berry leather, chewy but not brittle, and deep red in color?)

Cool completely before storing.  Tomatoes can be stored in the refrigerator in sterilized glass jars, with enough olive oil to cover them.  Or, you can store them in ziplock-type bags and freeze them.