Roast Tomato Sauce

This week saw the first day of autumn, or the autumn equinox, and the traditional season for a 'harvest festival'. I therefore shouldn't be surprised that in recent weeks my focus has been on cooking up what nature (with a little help from me in some cases) has produced.

This week is no exception. I have heard that this year in the UK has been a poor year for tomatoes but a great year for figs. I beg to differ. My fig tree has produced only around 6 ripened fruit so far but my tomatoes have been brilliant. Hardly a split fruit and I'm confident that a record percentage will ripen, meaning I probably won't be making any green tomato chutney this year - a definite first.

However, this did mean that I found myself picking 2kg of ripe tomatoes in one go - probably another record. I decided to roast them to make a sauce.

I set the oven to heat up to 190C, gas mark 5, and dug out two large baking trays, which I lined with a sliced onion and 5 cloves of garlic, also sliced. I then set out to halve my 2kg tomatoes and place these on the onion and garlic, cut side up. The whole lot was sprinkled with thyme leaves, salt, pepper, a teaspoon of soft brown sugar, 2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar, and 4 tablespoons of groundnut oil.

I placed them in the oven for 70 minutes, switching the trays around half-way through the cooking time.

After allowing the trays to cool slightly I tipped everything into a food processor and gave it a blitz before pressing the puree through a sieve to remove the seeds and tomato skins.

If you prefer a chunky sauce you will need to skin the tomatoes before roasting them and then just give them a brief turn in the food processor after roasting. However, my tomatoes are a small, cherry variety and the thought of skinning them all at the start was too much to contemplate. You do lose some volume of sauce when sieving it though. I ended up with 750ml of sauce, enough to serve 6 as a pasta sauce. I imagine that a skinned and un-sieved version would give you almost a litre.

All in all, a pretty easy way to deal with a glut of tomatoes, as well as store some of the taste of summer for a cold winter day, since the sauce freezes well. I placed two 250ml batches in the freezer and kept another 250ml portion in the fridge for a speedy work-day pasta supper.

Delicious!

Spiced Cranberry Vodka

All that talk of sloe gin last weekend got me thinking about making something 'warming' for the shorter and colder days that aren't too far around the corner.

Last winter I made a couple of dishes that called for 200g of cranberries and I could only buy them in 300g bags. Each time I put the left-over 100g into the freezer, thinking they'd come in handy. All these months later and I still have the two partially filled bags of cranberries waiting to be turned into something.

When making sloe gin the big chore is to prick each and every sloe with a pin in order to allow the gin to get into the fruit and enhance the flavour of the finished product. A simple alternative is to freeze the fruit before steeping it in the gin. The science behind this is that water expands on freezing so the water in each and every cell of the fruit expands as it freezes and bursts the cell wall. This is why defrosted fruit and vegetables are always a bit limp compared to their fresh versions as they have lost all their structure. Anyway, with all the cell walls split you have essentially done the equivalent of sticking a pin in each and every one quite a few times over.

With my cranberries already frozen they seemed ripe for dropping into a jar of alcohol and I felt vodka would be a good option. Sloe gin seems to call for up to the same volume of sugar as fruit but I find this a bit sweet. So, on this occasion I erred on the side of caution and added just 100g caster sugar to my still frozen 200g cranberries and threw these into a clip-top jar with 1 litre of vodka.

To make up for the slightly lower level of sugar I added a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste before unearthing an already open packet of mulled wine spice sachets, which I thought would add a nicely warming element. Not sure how many to put in, I threw caution to the wind and added three. This could be a huge mistake but we will have to wait and see.

I should say that I sterilised the jar first by placing it, without the rubber seal that sits around the lid, into a warm oven for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, I popped the rubber seal in a heatproof bowl and poured over some boiling water. I let the jar cool a bit before adding the vodka and other ingredients so as not to crack the glass with the shock of the cold vodka or risk scorching the fruit and spices.

With all the ingredients in and the lid reassembled and sealed, I gave the whole lot a gentle shake.

I will give the jar a daily gentle shake until all the sugar has dissolved - you'll be able to see it settle on the bottom if it's still in granular form. I'll then switch to giving it a gentle shake on a weekly basis.

Sloe gin is generally left for up to three months but other flavoured tipples I've made have been left for just two weeks. I have no idea how long I'll leave this little concoction for but I'll let you know what I end up doing and what the results are like.

Fingers crossed it will work out well and keep the family happy and quiet over the festive season!

Deconstructed Rhubarb Crumble

I'm not sure what has got into the rhubarb plants this week but, having picked over half a kilo from my two plants last Sunday, I ended up picking another 625g this Sunday. This is definitely a personal best. However, with the days getting shorter and cooler, I imagine this could be the final crop, or at least the final crop from which anything meaningful can be created.

Yet again I was casting around for an interesting recipe and came across a label I'd saved from a bottle of sloe gin given to me a couple of Christmases ago. This 'serving suggestion' was to bake rhubarb in the gin, which sounded like a match made in heaven. So, I chopped the rhubarb into 1-2cm pieces and put them in a roasting dish. I then mixed 80g caster sugar with 7 tablespoons of sloe gin and a couple of tablespoons of water before pouring this over the rhubarb. I popped this in the oven (heated to 180C, gas mark 4) for 40 minutes until the fruit was tender, basting it every 10-15 minutes.

Wondering aloud what may be nice served with this baked rhubarb my friend suggested some nutty biscuits that my Mum had made a while back. Fortunately I have this recipe in my collection so I knocked up a batch whilst the rhubarb was baking. Helpfully, both recipes are baked at same temperature.

These are officially Almond and Pecan Biscuits but I didn't have any pecans so substituted these for pistachios. I'm sure the recipe would work well with any sort of nut.  To make these cream 150g softened unsalted butter with 100g caster sugar, then mix in 100g ground almonds, 100g gram flour, 60g chopped pecans (or other nuts of your choice), 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract (or vanilla bean paste), and 1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger. Form the mixture into 12 equal sized balls and place on two baking trays lined with non-stick parchment. Flatten the dough balls slightly before baking in the oven for about 15 minutes.

Allow to rest on the trays for a few minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely. If you find the oven a bit full with the rhubarb too, you can always cook the biscuits in two batches. This also saves on baking parchment as well as washing up.

The rhubarb recipe says that it's best served slightly warm, and with a very healthy lunch of salad consumed, my friend and I couldn't help but try the rhubarb with a still-slightly-warm biscuit on the side. The result was divine and resembled a somewhat deconstructed fruit crumble, particularly if you let your biscuit soak up a bit of the rhubarb 'juice'.

There will now be no stopping me deploying both recipes when I next make a rhubarb crumble. I think briefly blitzing all the biscuit recipe dry ingredients with cold butter to make a crumb texture and using this to top the baked rhubarb and sloe gin mixture would be the best rhubarb crumble ever.

Thank goodness I have been freezing raw rhubarb as well as cooking with it straight from the garden. All I need now is some more sloe gin, since I used up my very last drop on this recipe. Fortunately I helped my parents pick sloes last weekend so perhaps if I offer to supply the rhubarb they will offer a few tablespoons of their yet-to-be-made gin?

Autumn Harvest

I have been making the most of the limited good weather this summer to explore some amazing gardens. Some have inspired me to change my own planting and colour schemes, such as this flower bed at Great Chalfield Manor in Wiltshire (I shall definitely be introducing some new foliage in dark red and silver-green as well as some orange blooms to my garden in the spring).

Others have made me hanker after a garden about ten-times the size of the one I have, along with a few thousand pounds spare so that I could own one of Jenny Pickford's wonderful iron and glass sculptures, seen here at The Courts Garden.

However, all these visits meant that my own garden was in need of a little attention this weekend and I became somewhat glad that it is the size it is. A few hours of gentle labour in the lovely sunshine later and I had a sack of clippings ready for the recycling lorry and a wonderful harvest of rhubarb, tomatoes and semi-dried lavender.

This left me the afternoon to decide what to make of my produce. The lavender was pretty simple. Once it was trimmed and tied in bundles I used clothes pegs to clip it to the top of the blinds at the lounge windows, which are rarely closed, to allow it to finish drying. It's also giving a great scent to the room.

Knowing that more tomatoes would be ripening in the next few days I decided to attempt to semi-dry the tomatoes I'd picked, since there's only so much salad I can eat in a week. I followed a Nigella Lawson recipe that she calls 'Moonblush Tomatoes' since she leaves them overnight to 'dry'. Cut each tomato in half and place in a roasting tin, cut side up. Sprinkle with a smattering of sugar, salt and dried herbs (I used oregano). Heat the oven to about 220C or gas mark 7. Once hot, place the trays of tomatoes into the oven and immediately switch it off. Leave the tomatoes in the oven overnight (hence the 'moonblush' name) or all day if you are doing it in the morning. I like to repeat this process once more for good measure.

The result is a soft tomato that is very lightly cooked and has a very intense flavour. I've popped some in the freezer to add a taste of summer to dishes later in the year. The others are in the fridge and are good with pretty much anything but perhaps a risotto, quinoa or Puy lentil salad.

Finally I turned my attention to the rhubarb. Considering the fact that I only have two plants, it was quite a good crop, weighing in at around 630g. With plenty of fruit in the fruit bowl to keep me going for breakfasts and lunches I was put off just cooking it to have with yoghurt and muesli. I also thought making a cake or crumble without enough mouths to feed would be a bit of a killer for my waistline so I scoured all my recipe book indexes to see what else could be done. Riverford's Everyday and Sunday book came up trumps with a Rhubarb and Praline Semifreddo - something that would use all the rhubarb but with the result living in the freezer until I had enough mouths to feed or that could be easily rationed out in (hopefully) non-waist-expanding portions.

First make the praline by toasting 75g flaked almonds in a non-stick frying pan and then adding 50g caster sugar and heating gently until it has melted and coated the nuts. The sugar should turn a dark caramel colour. Tip out the caramel-coated nuts onto some baking paper and allow to cool.

Next, cut up the rhubarb into 1-2cm pieces and cook with 100g caster sugar and the zest and juice of an orange. The recipe asks for 500g of rhubarb but I threw in the lot. The fruit should be tender but still hold its shape. Strain the fruit, reserving the liquid, and chill.

For the next bit you need three fairly large mixing bowls and an electric whisk. In your largest bowl whisk together 4 egg yolks, 50g caster sugar and a few drops of vanilla essence (or vanilla bean paste). Everything will end up in this bowl so it needs to be fairly large. Clean the whisk beaters and in a second bowl whisk 500ml double cream until it forms soft peaks. Clean the whisk beaters again and in the final bowl whisk 4 egg whites until they form soft peaks. Now gently fold the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture. Next, fold in the cream. Finally smash up the praline and fold it into the egg and cream mixture along with the chilled rhubarb. 

Take a large mould or a couple of 1kg loaf tins lined with cling film and carefully fill with the mixture. Wrap in more cling film, carefully pressing it onto the surface of the mixture. Chill for at least 5 hours or until you are ready to eat it. Serve in slices with the reserved rhubarb and orange juice.

I have no idea what it tastes like but I can't wait to find out!