I got silly and put in six different varieties, and they Just. Won’t. Stop. I’m picking a bucket-full every week. So far I’m keeping up by:
taking them to work for snacks - I can get through maybe 50 per week like this
putting them in salads
making kasundi, an amazing delicious oil pickle (recipe)
cooking lightly then stick-blending for a quick tomato sauce
giving them away!
I’m intending to make a confit with some of the last bunch (recipe) and see how that goes.
What am I missing? Any other suggestions? I’m thinking that just cooking them into passetta or sim is no good because the flesh to skin/seeds ratio is just too high… am I wrong?
Make ketchup, or do what I do, make ketchup and then use that ketchup to make bbq sauce. (I think this is from the NY Times):
4pints ripe grape tomatoes, cut in half
2cups red wine vinegar
⅔cup dark brown sugar
4teaspoons salt
2teaspoons black pepper
¾teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
Nutritional Information
Nutritional analysis per serving (16 servings)
54 calories; 0 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 0 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 12 grams carbohydrates; 0 grams dietary fiber; 10 grams sugars; 0 grams protein; 592 milligrams sodium
Note: Nutrient information is not available for all ingredients. Amount is based on available data.
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Preparation
In a wide skillet, simmer tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper until a thick jamlike mixture forms and liquid evaporates, 20 to 25 minutes. Purée until smooth. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve. (For a perfectly smooth texture, strain twice.) Stir in Worcestershire. Chill before serving.
Place cherry tomatoes on a platter with toothpicks. Serve alongside a bowl of ice-cold vodka and a dish of salt. Guests dip a tomato in the vodka, then in the salt.
Freeze them. They add a bit of summer sunshine come the long grey days of winter. All I do is rinse them, pick the stems off and throw them in a freezer bag. Once thrown into soup or stew their skins come off with a little prodding.
Mine are the lil yellow cherry tomatoes. I find they taste better than the red ones.
We had a very large summer squash and a bush full of cherry tomatoes upon our return from a trip this week (about 2 pounds of each). Looking at that recipe, it seemed that I could omit the vinegar and brown sugar and just use the rest of the ingredients as an addition to a squash-tomato puree. Instead of vinegar, I dumped in about a half a carton of chicken stock. When the squash and tomatoes were tender, I used a stick blender to puree it all and served it with a healthy dollop of Greek yogurt. The honey in the yogurt was a nice counterpoint to the spices.
To freeze, cut out the core/stem, place on a single layer on a cookie sheet and put them in the freezer. Once frozen, transfer them to zip-lock bags. They won’t be good for salads when thawed, but you can use them for cooking.
The ice cream is fresh made mozzarella, the whipped cream is “garlic foam” (looked like whipped cream, tasted like roasted garlic), the cherry is a cherry tomato, the chocolate sauce is a balsamic vinegar reduction. There is a pine nut/minced tomato salsa.
This has been a good year for cherry tomatoes here. “Tomatoberry” is very good (strawberry-shaped fruit, meaty, not too much juice, good flavor) and “Purple Bumblebee” (one of the Artisan series) is excellent (huge fruit, close to twice the size of some other varieties, very decorative (red-purple with darker stripes). I’m eating them as fast as I can in salads.
As for the pack-in-oil with herbs method for long-term preservation, safety may be an issue.
There’s no such thing as zero risk in this world. The author of the linked article keeps hers in the cupboard while I keep mine in the fridge but she rejects added flavors like garlic and herbage while I’m constantly experimenting and trying new combinations. As always, use common sense. If your tomatoes start to smell funny, change to an unhealthy color, grow fuzz or if it tries to register to vote - discard it.
1 pound cherry tomatoes
2 or 3 cloves of garlic in their jackets
Olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp of freshly ground black pepper
Handful of fresh basil
1 stick of butter at room temperature
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
On a small foil lined baking sheet, toss tomatoes and garlic cloves with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, salt, and pepper. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the tomatoes have split and slumped. Cool to room temperature, then squeeze the garlic from their jackets.
Put the butter, basil, tomatoes, and garlic in a food processor and blend until smooth. Transfer to a bowl, cover, and chill until firm. Serve on steak, chicken, shellfish, regular fish, or any other savory application.
