We're having a very good year for tomatoes considering the lousy weather we have been experiencing. The problem with having so many tomatoes is what to do with them. Well, I love pizza especially pizza with sun dried tomatoes. Hummm, but we haven't had any consistent sun for the past month or so. Plus, summer in Tsukahara is the peak season for vacationing insects. They seem to congregate in our garden from all over Japan. No sun and lots of insects make the task of drying tomatoes in the sun impossible. Thanks to the internet I discovered making sun dried tomatoes in the oven. Hey, I'm using solar power for the oven so it's kinda like sun dried isn't it?
Alrighty then, to make a long story short...it's easy to do this. Make sure you use tomatoes of roughly the same size. I used cherry tomatoes. Cut them in half and place the cut side face up on something that doesn't stick. Very lightly salt the halves (helps bring out the flavor). Place in an oven set at 90C. Now be patient. Actually set the timer for 2 hours and forget about them. After two hours, gently press on the halves, but don't flatten them too much. They''ll squirt some liquid. To keep from making a mess just place a paper towel over the halves to absorb the excess liquid. I thought of this...pretty clever huh? Next, I lightly sprinkled some Italian seasoning over the halves and placed the whole thing back in the oven for another 2.5 hours. The entire house had a wonderful scent of sun dried tomatoes. It's easy to tell if the tomatoes are done...dry but pliable. Don't over do it or you'll end up with tomato chips!
Storage is easy too. We decided to place the halves in a freezer bag and store them in the freezer. Another option is to store them in extra virgin olive oil. Pretty simple, right?
