Nigella's moonblush tomatoes

Having made tomato soup, tomato sauce, tomato salads and a myriad of other tomato-based recipes in response to the glut of fruit I found myself with come September this year, I was stumped for ideas (and frankly low on enthusiasm) on how to use up my excess tomatoes until I found this.

They aren’t quite sundried tomatoes- you know the ones that have a chewy, slightly tough texture- they’re more sunblush. They last about 1-2 weeks in the fridge and are much softer, just with a sweet, concentrated tomatoey flavour.

Apparently Nigella adds them to pasta dishes and salads but I found them to be very good in sandwiches and particularly with cheese-on-toast. Yum!

By the way, the tomatoes in the photo are pre-roasting, they will look slightly mushier and a bit crinkly once they are cooked.

Ingredients

• Tomatoes- lots of them! These can be any kind and any quantity. You will see from the photo that I had approx 500-750gms but you can adapt the seasonings to match the quantity you have.
• Salt and pepper
• 1tbsp olive oil
• 1tsp dried thyme

Method

1. Switch your oven on to its very highest setting (mine manages 250 degrees C) and leave it to warm up for ½ hour.
2. In the mean time half your tomatoes and lay them cut side upwards in a baking tray, sprinkle over a pinch of salt and pepper, the oil and the thyme.
3. When the oven is up to temperature, put the tomatoes in and turn the oven off.
4. Leave it like this with the door closed (don’t even open it to peek!) overnight or for around 8 hours. This dries them out slowly and concentrates their flavour.
5. After this time remove from the oven, scoop into an airtight container and use as and when you fancy.