Tuesday, 29 October 2013

Will these be the last tomatoes of the season?

Somehow I doubt it. Much like I always believe each cut of the lawns from September onwards will be the "Last mow of the year" and then two months later I am still naively thinking this as I drag the mower out from it's hiding place in the shed yet again.
The tomatoes this year have been spectacular, juicy, sweet and prolific - I have what seems like gallons of them in the freezer, roasted, skinned and turned into a rich base for any numbers of dishes. My latest recipe is meatballs in tomato sauce and it's so easy to make - it's a Jamie Oliver recipe that calls for sausages or beef burgers pulled apart and rolled into mouthsized (and this depends on how big each person's mouth is, of course) balls and quickly browned in a frying pan. I tend to cook it all slightly differently because what does Jamie Oliver (net worth is probably about 100 million from his cookery empire) that I don't?
I wash and gently cut the skin of each tomato so it will shed it's skin easily later on. Then I pack them all in a roasting tin, add salt, pepper, basil or rosemary (whatever herb I have, really) and drizzle a little oil over them all. Next I put them in a hot oven to bring out the sugar in them and once they have had a good forty minutes I pull them out and with asbestos hands I pick each tomato up and slip it's skin off it before plonking the 'naked' tomato into a bowl.
As the tomatoes are in the oven I gently fry some garlic and onion before adding mushrooms and keep this on a low heat so they all go soft rather than brown. Then I pop them out of the frying pan (or wok) and quickly fry the meatballs before adding the onions and mushrooms and a good slug of red wine to cook off. Next go in the tomatoes, skinned and slightly mushed up (with clean hands or a clean spoon) and some herbs and this all cooks gently together until you are ready to serve with chunky bread or some form of pasta. Yum.
I have made enough for six of us from this pan of tomatoes which is just as well as we have four relatives visiting at the weekend. So easy to do and so tasty to eat - unless you know different.

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