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Preserve us: making the most of tomatoes

As well as celebrating the musky flavour of summer tomatoes in quick salads and fresh sauces, we should also take the chance to preserve them in chutneys and jams to brighten dark winter days, says Nadine Abensur

You don’t have to be a gardener to make the most of a summer glut of tomatoes. Now is the best time to bulk-buy – they are at their sweetest, ripest, cheapest best and you’ll see them piled mountain-high not only in supermarkets but, more appealingly, in specialist, Asian or Middle-Eastern grocery stores. Choose tomatoes still on the vine. Sniff deep into a bunch and just note the difference between these and the plastic-wrapped, hard and insipid-coloured tomatoes of winter. Buy them by the kilo and make preserves, chutneys, or oven-dried tomatoes in oil – this way you can enjoy them over the winter months or give them as gifts. Make large pots of tomato sauce and use it as needed over pasta and in lasagnes. Apart from a little coring and chopping there is practically no work to do. Leave them to cook slowly for hours, with an occasional stir, and remember to have plenty of sterilised preserving jars, or rubber-sealed jars ready.

Sterilising jars
1. The simplest method is to place clean, open jars on an oven tray lined with kitchen paper. Preheat the oven to 170C/325F/gas mark 3 and leave the jars in there for 10 minutes.
2. Alternatively, run them through a dishwasher cycle. They will come out perfectly clean and still hot. Pour the hot sauces or chutneys straight into the jars.
3. Or, bring a kettle to the boil. Clean your jars well and pour boiling water into them to the top. Leave for a couple of minutes and empty out. Again, use straight away.

• Oven-dried Tomatoes
• A Tomato Sauce for the Winter
• Red Tomato Preserve with Cumin Seeds and Ginger
• Easy Tomato Salad
• Quick Tomato Pasta Dish

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