5 recipes that use ripe tomatoes, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Greek village salad, takes 15 minutes. It is most often cooked with sugar, basil and onion.
Run out of ripe tomatoes? Tinned chopped tomatoes: a 400g tin for about 6 tomatoes.
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A big batch of spicy pizza sauce with fresh oregano, thyme and basil, plus ginger, garlic and green chilli for an Indian-style kick. The tomatoes are cooked down, strained and simmered until thick, so the sauce won't make the base soggy. Freeze it in portions for quick pizzas, or use 2 tsp dried herbs in place of fresh.
A true Greek salad has no lettuce: just ripe tomatoes, crunchy cucumber, sharp onion and olives, dressed with good olive oil and dried oregano, with a whole slab of feta on top. Salt the tomatoes first and they'll make their own dressing.
Roasting the tomatoes with onion and garlic concentrates their sweetness and gives the soup a gentle smokiness you can't get from a tin. Lovely with a grilled cheese sandwich.
Fresh tomato puree tastes brighter than tinned, and you need only tomatoes and boiling water. The tomatoes are scalded so their skins slip off, then blended smooth. Use it in curries, pasta sauces, soups and the home-made tomato ketchup.
A proper home-made ketchup: fresh tomato puree boiled down with sugar and a muslin bag of whole spices, then sharpened with vinegar. It's thick, glossy and gently spiced. It keeps for a long time in the fridge and is great in pasta dishes.
