Does anyone one have any recipes to use up a lot of cherry tomatoes? It seems my experiment with a blight free tom has gone quite well. Seriously, I have fuck loads (I believe that is the expression I heard them use on Gardener's World.) and I made BBQ sauce and some tomato sauce for storing on Saturday but the BBQ one demanded skinning of the tomatoes which became very boring very quickly. It is very tasty though, do you want to recipe? Well here it is,
BARBECUE SAUCE
24 large ripe tomatoes, peeled, cored and chopped
2 cups chopped celery
2 cups chopped onions
1 ½ cups chopped sweet green or red peppers
2 hot red peppers
1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon tabasco sauce
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 cup vinegar
Combine the tomatoes, celery, onions and peppers in a large pot. Cook until the vegetables are soft, this will take about 30 minutes. Press through a food mill. Return to pot and continue cooking until mixture reduces by half, this step will take about 45 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients and cook slowly until mixture is the consistency of catsup, about 1 ½ hours. As this thickens up, be sure to keep stirring frequently to keep the mixture from sticking. Pour into hot jars, straining out the peppercorns, leaving 1/4 inch. Process pints for 20 minutes in a boiling water bath. This will make 4 to 5 pints of a very spicy barbecue sauce.
As Autumn is sort of sneaking upon us, warmish days and cold nights, I decided that a bit of a harvest was needed so hence the large amount of tomatoes.
I have had a good summer though, I hope you lot have too, and there was lots to pick. So there was the last of the melons, cucumber, beetroot, lettuce, carrots, runner beans, raspberries (a few anyway), cauliflower, sweet corn
and 8 apples from my tiny, tiny tree.
I am a happy man. Hurray for me.
Hopefully it will stay warm for a while as I still have chilli plants in that are covered in fruit but they are taking ages to ripen, I now have a cloche on over them to try and encourage them to turn red.
Over the winter I am hoping to move a number of the beds around in order to make better use of the space but I want to get it done pretty soon as I would also like to grow some green manure on the beds to improve my soil a little.
I do think that we are going to have to invest in a small freezer to put in the basement though as our little one is stuffed full at the moment.
