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Sunny Side of the Street As we shift into late summer and we are suddenly aware that the days are growing just a little shorter, the urge to capture the flavours of the summer becomes urgent. Throughout history, indigenous peoples hung fish and meat, fruit and vegetables out to dry, hoping for a warm breeze and low humidity that would preserve their family meals for months to come. In
this century, the arrival of refrigeration and our global access to
fresh foods have all but obliterated the requirement for sun dried
foods, but our taste for it still remains. The popularity of sun-dried
tomatoes is only one sign of the universal appetite for summer flavours.
So is the popularity of dried fruits and fruit leathers, whose soft and
chewy texture and sweet summer flavours are so reassuring when warm
breezes begin to turn cool and blustery. Now
that dried foods have gone from necessity to luxury, the cook is allowed
a certain creative latitude. When a tomato is being dried in order to
maximize its storage life, 98 per cent of the moisture must be removed.
But when a tomato is being dried sheerly to intensify its flavour and
destined to be well refrigerated after that, only half of its succulent
juices need be lost, leaving it quite soft and giving at its heart. Drying
a summer crop simply to feed a family for winter was not an activity
that lend itself to creative cooking. The challenge was simply to beat
out the rains and minimize loss. Meat and fish were heavily salted and
fruits and vegetables were often blanched before they were subjected to
the sun’s rays. Drying food for flavour, on the other hand is a
challenge to the inventive side of the brain. Seasoning
dried tomatoes with basil, thyme, rosemary and orange zest helps build
another layer of flavours, which in turn translates into an interesting
pesto or pasta sauce. These same tomatoes can then be layered with
cheese or vegetables for a sandwich or a topping for fish and chicken
where their flavours lend a nice note of mellow acidity. Naturally
tomatoes aren’t the only things to profit from partial drying. Beans,
sliced beets, celery, cauliflower, corn, onions, leeks, eggplant,
peppers, zucchini – in fact just about any vegetables with the
exception of lettuce will undergo a tasty transition with exposed to a
low dry heat. If
you happen to live in a warm dry climate, candidates for drying can be
laid out on a flat screen and depending on the temperature can take as
little as three hours or as long as three days to dry. In an electric
dryer the same result can be achieved in an hour and you don’t have to
worry about bugs or rain. If
you’re using an oven, most ingredients will become dense, slightly dry
but still faintly juicy in just a few hours in the oven at a very low
heat. Since ovens vary so widely, it is impossible to be more precise.
You should know that summer squash, mushrooms, onions and potatoes for
chips clearly take more time to dry than vegetables such as corn,
tomatoes or peppers. In the first case the object is to parch brittle
and in the latter merely to condense and concentrate. In
general vegetables and fruit should be thinly slice and placed on a
screen to dry. Plum tomatoes sliced in half lengthwise and placed on a
standard baking tray yield more succulent results than other varieties.
And it is important not to crowd the tray. Vegetables like humans are
more affable when slightly lonely. Basic
Oven Dried Tomatoes 28
medium sized plum tomatoes (about 4 pounds, core end cut off and halved
lengthwise 2
to 3 tablespoons good quality olive oil 1
teaspoon sea salt fresh
ground black pepper 1)
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Using a pastry brush, lightly
coat the skin side of each tomato half with olive oil. Place skin side
down on a large baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper tot aste. 2)
Bake the tomatoes until they shrink to about ¼ of their original
size, about 4 to 6 hours; they should remain soft and juicy. Let the
tomatoes cool on the baking sheet. Place in a container and refrigerate. Yield:
2 cups |
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