Tomatoes

With so many varieties of tomatoes on offer these days, it isn’t too difficult to come up with a tempting tomato dish. A platter of different fully ripe tomatoes, sliced and drizzled with good oil, finished perhaps with a few nuggets of goat’s cheese, is always impressive. And of course there are all manner of soups and sauces that you can create.

If you’re a keen tomato grower, you can preserve your excess crop. Halve the tomatoes and semi-dry them in the oven on its lowest setting for a few hours until shrivelled, then preserve in oil in sterilised jars, with a few thyme or other herb sprigs added. These semi-dried tomatoes have all sorts of uses - a great accompaniment to cheese, they can also be chopped and added to salads, sauces and so on. Cherry tomatoes semi-dried with their stalks on make a particularly good snack with drinks.