Busy in the kitchen

Hello, how are you?  I can hear the sigh of relief in the northern hemisphere from all the peeps who are longing for spring and warmer days.  I know it doesn't really warm up for a bit but I hope the appearance of bulbs poking out of the ground, the lengthening of days and a little sunshine here and there is cheering you up.  I'm not ready for autumn yet let alone winter as we had far too many grey cool days this summer in Melbourne.  Over in the west on the farm they are longing for cooler days after a long hot summer.  I guess the challenge is finding lovely things in all the seasons and making the most of it.

So late February is when the tomatoes start to ripen nicely and then we have to find different ways to use them before they spoil.  I've already posted about oven dried tomatoes here and have made another batch since.  I've also made some tomato chutney and used the few dodgy apples from the tree in the back yard that the parrots didn't get to.
 
 

Chutney cooking up nicely.

 This is cherry tomato tart we had for dinner one evening.  Delicious.

Hubby and I visited a farmers market recently and bought a couple of kilos of blood plums, my absolute favourite plums.   I used some of them to make this upside down cake.  Recipe can be found
here.

With yet more tomatoes ripening in the garden, a mix of cherry and grosse lisse, the making of tomato sauce/ketchup was next on the agenda.  I used the recipe found here
a slightly corrupted version using red onions (all I had to hand), balsamic and apple cider vinegars and brown sugar.  It was quite a process and you need a good three hours to make it but it is SO worth the effort, the sauce tastes amazing.

After the sauce had finished cooking I blended it with a stick blender which reduced the amount of pulp after sieving.

All that remained after sieving and that went into the compost.

The finished product.

 Hubby and I are off over to Western Australia next weekend for two weeks to visit Mum and for hubby, my brother and his mate to go on a fishing holiday for a week down to the south west coast.  On our return we will have some exciting news to share but until then I just have to be patient.

Anne xx

Oven dried cherry tomatoes

Summer is my favourite season of the year.  Melbourne has more cold and cool weather than warm so when it is warm and sunny I get out and revel in it.  It also means things happen in the garden.  I love my flowers but I'm also enjoying growing vegetables.  Which brings me to the subject of cherry tomatoes of which we have many at the moment.  We've given them away, eaten them in salads, had them on quiches and on pizzas.

 Don't they look good?  Not being able to eat all these before they spoiled, I decided to make some oven dried tomatoes.

This is what they looked like after being the oven for about 30 minutes.

The dried tomatoes are in extra virgin olive oil, an Australia brand and flavoured with rosemary, basil, thyme and oregano which I have growing in the garden.

I used a recipe found here adjusting it where needed to fit the quantity of tomatoes I had.  I also adjusted the oven temperature and cooking time as needed.  I made another jar today so we now have two jars.  We also have a surplus of Grosse Lisse tomatoes so today I made some chutney but that will be the subject of another post.

For all the lovely peeps in the Northern Hemisphere who are longing for spring, I hope this post reminds you of all the good things that come with warmer weather.

Anne xx