Okay, not quite. Tomatoes don’t dry well when the weather’s constantly in the 60s and rainy, which is par for the course here over the last week and a half. But if we pretend the toaster oven is a mini replica of a star, we can indeed have homemade sun-dried tomatoes. I don’t think I’ve ever cooked with SDT, so I’m not sure why my sudden interest. I have them in dishes at restaurants occasionally, but it’s nothing that I’ve ever come away thinking “Wow, I need to get me some more of those SDT.” But I didn’t let that stop me. I saw some nice seeds for Principe Borghese tomatoes in the spring, and I had some room for a couple plants, so I picked them up. Principe Borghese are supposedly what they use for SDT in Italy, and Italy knows tomatoes, right?
I just cut the tomatoes in half (they’re about golf ball size) laid them face up on a baking sheet and sprinkled with some olive oil and salt. Then pop ’em in the oven at about 200 F for six or so hours, or until they get kinda leathery – they shouldn’t be crispy.
When they’re finished, they have a nicely concentrated tomato flavor. These ones look a little seedy, but I’m not sure that makes a difference for cooking. Now the questions is, will I actually cook with them? I tend to have lots of big aspirations that sometimes don’t pan out the way I expect. Anybody have any good recipes using SDT?
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