Roast Tomato, Walnut & Lemon Pesto

so much more than just pesto that its almost insulting! Use this to spread on toast, coat pasta, make crusts on meat, use as a dip, make elegant canapes liven up soups, make chunky toasted sandwiches with this and goats cheese and much more.

My original recipe for this started I think based on a Greek recipe (hence the cinnamon) and had a bit of eastern Mediterranean influence (might have been a Claudia Roden or Anissa Helou thing) but anyhow its been a dinner party canape staple of mine forever. Here is my basic recipe and the quantities are for guidance only, the key thing here is to make it how you like it:

Ingredients

A jar of sun dried tomatoes oil and all or a jar of home bottled roast tomatoes in which case no need to add any extra tomato puree or water which you may need to add if you are using jarred sun dried tomatoes

A big handful possibly two of walnuts (probably a cup)

half a preserved lemon pulp and all (I like mine lemony – if you are not sure start with a quarter)

chilli (I am sensitive so I dont add a huge amount…if you prefer a dip more on the muhamara side of things…spice it up)

If you are using home bottle tomatoes you might want to add a glug more of olive oil

2 to three and possibly four cloves of garlic. I like quite a lot

salt pepper and absolutely do not omit the cinnamon. half to one teaspoon.

How To

Blitz it up in a food blender. I like to keep mine with a bit of texture – think of the difference between crunchy and smooth peanut butter.

Thats it.

Always have some in the fridge. Always.

How to bottle sunshine – slow roast organic Romanian tomatoes in jars

summer in a jar

I’ve eaten tomatoes around the Mediterranean, I’ve eaten Mexican and Californian tomatoes and I love to eat tomatoes like a fruit but hear me out – Romanian tomatoes are simply the best except maybe for Mum’s home grown ones. So when you have the chance to buy proper slow grown heritage varieties grab all you can and when you cant gorge on them any more here is how to bottle that taste of summer. I try and avoid superfluous titles in my posts but these merit it.

How to preserve that flavour? Now personally along with other fads like the balsamification of food I am not a fan of “sun dried tomatoes” – I would rather put shoe leather on my plate. But semi dried or if you permit me to use the term, “confit” tomatoes where they are moist and the flavour has been concentrated down – thats a whole different ball game!

Ingredients

The best most flavourful ugly mug tomatoes money can buy plus bay leaves, rosemary, thyme and garlic to throw in the jars. This may look like I stalk veggie sellers in markets but you need to secure your tomato swag! the particular ones here and I could not stop nicking them off the trays both before and after roasting were from Nicole at La Tanti Ioana – beautiful veggie boxes.

How To

What you want is lightly roasted, not blackened, and cooked through well, but not dried out. Many recipes call for olive oil to be dribbled over at this stage but I don’t bother. Why waste and ruin volatile oils whose goodness and flavor is maximized cold? Simply sprinkle a little salt and pepper over them. Slice in half horizontally. Roast at 90C until they decrease in volume by 50% – approx 2-3 hours in a convection oven or a day or two on a tin roof in the Balkans. But then I am accident prone…the whole tin roof thing while eco friendly….might not be me-friendly…

I love how they change

and you see the caramelised juices appear. Thats how I like mine. If you are fussy you can de-seed them before roasting. I think life is too short. Roasting the tomatoes of course doesn’t decrease their rich supply of lycopenes, a powerful antioxidant.

Then I prepare the jars adding the herbs that come to hand and that will infuse the tomatoes with a bit of added flavour. You dont have to do this – I just like to do it and it makes the resulting sauces and pestos even more effortless. If only people would believe that convenience food can also be home made.

So now squish in your tomatoes. I like to keep them looking orderly, I dont want tomato mush. These ones went in so well there was almost no room for a drizzle of olive oil or cold pressed sunflower oil.

and then they get to be water babies. Here they are with the sweet and sour cherries being taken to 100C for a good 30 minute boil to sterilise them.

Thats it folks! And you can do amazing things with them.

Use to make the fastest most intense Roast Tomato Sauce ever

Use to make the best Roast Tomato, Walnut & Lemon pesto ever

or just crush over toasted bread rubbed with a little garlic and the oil from the jar and have a glass of red wine.

Roast tomato sauce

Its fast and faster still if made with home bottled roast tomatoes

its easy, its intense

it covers all tomato sauce bases.

Simmer meatballs in it, layer a dish of melanzane parmigiana, serve plain with home made pasta and freshly grated parmesan, pour over fried eggs, dribble across sausages and green lentils, make your best pizza ever and so on and so on. You cant have enough good tomato sauce on hand in the kitchen. There are as many different types of tomato sauce as there are cooks so here is my “go to” sauce that is fool proof when you are confronted with less than inspiring fruit and stunning when made with summery full flavour specimens.

If you want a smooth sauce (personally a bit prissy I think and smacks of baby food) then either peel and seed your tomatoes first or pass the mixture through a “mouli” (food mill). For everyday home cooking there really is no need and besides the seeds and skin is where a lot of the goodness lies.

Ingredients

4 cloves garlic

1 onion

1 kg of tomatoes or a jar of the home bottled tomatoes

Some alcohol such as left over red wine (in the rare case this might occur) or better martini, approx 300ml

1 lemon with the skin peeled in strips, juice of the lemon

Some Worcestershire sauce (optional but I like it)

How To

Cut the tomatoes in half horizontally. Oil a baking sheet that you have covered with aluminium foil (reduce washing up). Don’t bother to skin the onion or garlic. Throw the garlic, tomatoes and onion on the sheet and roast in the oven for approximately 1 hour – until the tomatoes look well cooked and start to caramelize a bit. You want the little brown caramelly bits.

If you have bottled these beauties…you just fast forward all the way here..and fry some onions and garlic in a sauce pan and add your tomatoes from the jar (do discard the rosemary as it will be bitter but the thyme is fine)

At this stage the seasoning is up to you and the final dish you are using the sauce for. I sometimes add thyme, oregano or Worcestershire sauce depending on the dish and lets be honest depending on what is in the kitchen. Let the mixture boil and then cook on a low low heat for at least 20 minutes. The sauce deepens in flavour if you can leave it an hour. Take out the bay leaves and lemon peel. Bitter blitzed up bay leaves are really disgusting. You have been warned! Blitz it all up with your blender of choice (I use the stick blender) and you are set to go.

Variations: add the onion raw at the end when you blitz for a sauce with a bit of kick “gazpacho style”. The onion is blitzed in raw and gives not only great flavor but the maximum power of the almighty onion! Both onions and garlic are cholesterol busters so don’t be shy. Onions are high in vitamin C, B6, biotin, chromium, calcium and dietary fiber and also contain good amounts of folic acid and vitamin B1 and K.