Our tomato plants are really on a roll by now, producing a nice little daily crop for us to enjoy with our lunch. Cherry tomatoes in pots are definitely the way to go for our courtyard, and so wonderfully tasty too!

Cherry tomatoes

So as we’re getting towards a glut of tomatoes, this week we thought we’d have a go at sun-drying a batch, or more like sun-roasting them as the heat is pretty intense on our terrace! Here’s the day’s crop

Freshly picked

For drying cherry tomatoes, simply cut in half (larger tomatoes would be best sliced)

Cut in half

Most of the recipes we found on the internet start with “heat your oven”, or “take out your dehydrator”, but we’re going the natural way. Hvar’s August sunshine will take care of everything, including hygiene. Spreading our tomatoes cut-side up on a metal baking tray covered with foil, we sprinkled a little salt over them.

Baking tray

This tray was laid out in the full sun on our terrace for two and a half days. Besides the sunshine, the tomatoes were also heated from underneath by the stone pavers. Pretty much baked or roasted, rather than simply dried!

Sun-dried tomatoes

After a couple of days of moving them back and forth to keep them in the sun, we deemed them to be ready. A quick test found them to be intensely tasty, very sweet with a lovely roasted flavour. So it was into a jar with them, and cover with olive oil.

Into the jar

Don’t they look pretty? This is the first time we’ve tried this, and can’t wait to use them in cooking!

Jar of sun-roasted tomatoes