My tomatoes have been a joy this year. I have a tiny garden but do manage to grow the odd plant and I started the year by planting far to many tomato seeds - I ended up giving away over 50 plants in the spring. I kept 12 Golden Sunrise and 3 Hundreds and Thousands. The Beautiful Wife and I have not needed to buy a tomato since mid July and have often faced a glut. Last weekend I "took down" the garden for autumn. This meant dismantling the 12 plants that had been wrapping themselves around each other on the wall of the house. This left me with about 5lbs (2.5 Kg) of ripe tomatoes and about 6lbs (3 KG) of green toms.
Talking to colleagues at school, it appears that everyone has had a good year with their tomatoes apart from those few unlucky people whose caught some blight. For those who now have a mass of toms and don't really know what to do with them here are a couple of recipes. I will write more about chutneys later.
Green tomato chutney
3lb (1.3kg) green tomatoes
1.5lb (675gms) cooking apples
1.5lb (675gms) onions
2tbsp salt
12oz (350gms) sugar
2tsp ground mixed spice
8oz (225gms) Sultanas
1pint (575gms) malt vinegar
Chop or mince onions, apples and toms finely. Place in a large bowl, cover and leave overnight.
Pour off the liquid that has been drawn from the fruit and veg. Transfer the three ingredients to a large pan. Add the vinegar and bring to the boil. Add the spice, dried fruit and sugar.
Bring back to the boil and simmer until everything is pulpy and soft. This can take up
to 90 minutes. Spoon into sterilised jars and allow to mature for a couple of months.Serve with cold cuts salads, bangers and mash or just in sandwiches.
Fresh Tomato Sauce
Ripe tomatoes (any type)
Olive oil
Salt
Cut the tomatoes in half through the middle so that one end has the whole of the stalk point. Lay the on a baking sheet which has been lightly oiled. Sprinkle over a little salt (quality is important here) and put in an oven at a low heat and leave then for about an hour or until the are still holding shape but very gooey and jelly like.
Place then in a sieve over a bowl and force the pulp through the sieve into the bowl. Don’t forget to scrape the bottom of the sieve when all you have left is a dry pulp of skin and seeds left. Jar up the sauce and use over pasta or to enrich a minestrone.
With my yellow, Golden Sunrise tomatoes this sauce is an amazing colour.
