Candied Tomatoes

Tomatoes:

Tasting best in the summer season, because that's when beautifully ripe tomatoes in all their varieties are most tasteful. If you want to make something special with them, or you just have a surplus, you can easily preserve your tomatoes. And above all, candied tomatoes are simply delicious, and so nice (and practical!) to always have a jar around. . .

What exactly is confit?

This is a specific technique in which something is slowly cooked in fat (oil) or syrup.

This allows you to get the maximum flavor from your ingredient, in this case the tomato.

When you simmer tomatoes for a long time, they become sweeter and develop a lot of umami; a similar effect can be achieved through the candying process!

Partly because of this, candied tomatoes are real flavor bombs; so to speak 'sweets' that are real hard to resist!

Ingredients:

• 2kg tomatoes

• 6 to 8 cloves of garlic

• 2 Spanish red peppers

• fresh oregano - thyme - rosemary

• chili powder

• paprika powder

• El Andaluz from Euroma (spice mix)

• 1 tbsp (candy) sugar

• pepper & salt

• 120ml olive oil

Start by washing the tomatoes, removing their tops and making a few cuts at the top and bottom. Then immerse the tomatoes in boiling water for one or more minutes. As soon as you see the skins peeling off, remove the tomatoes from the water with a skimmer and immediately plunge them into previously prepared ice water.

Cut these peeled tomatoes into pieces and remove all the seeds.

Divide the remaining flesh nicely into strips to ultimately end up with 'elegant' pieces of candied tomato...

Now is also the time to preheat your oven to 100 degrees.

Then put the 120ml olive oil in a large bowl and add the crushed and finely chopped cloves as well as all the fresh and dried herbs and powders and the pepper & salt.

Also add the tomatoes to this oil mixture and finalize with a tablespoon of (candy) sugar.

Mix everything together very well and let it sit for a few minutes before straining the tomato segments from the oil and letting them drain well.

Once sufficiently drained, spread the tomato wedges very nicely on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Then slide this baking tray into a preheated oven at 90 to 100 degrees; You have to decide for yourself exactly how many degrees you want to set your oven to, as after all every oven is different, and so is every tomato ;-)

Extra tip: put a wooden spoon between the oven door! This allows you to let the oven vapor escape during the drying process.

Allow the marinated tomato strips to fry gently for 1 hour, then turn the lot of them over and let them fry further for yet another hour. . .

After the total baking time, check whether the tomatoes are sufficiently 'dried'; If not, let them continue cooking for another fifteen minutes or even half an hour and do so on both sides.

Personally, I don't want my candied tomatoes to be dried out too much, but I do want them to have changed enough in texture for me to be able to label them as candied or dried!

Finally, place the sufficiently candied tomato segments in your sterilized preserving jars.

Pour the remaining oil mixture (after straining) over them! If necessary, supplement with extra olive oil up to the edge of the jar, because this will ensure that your jar of delicious candied tomatoes stays fresh for a really long time so that you can continue to enjoy them! !

Once filled, immediately close the preserving jar and turn it over to allow it to cool in an airtight manner. . .

Very good:

• on butter-cheese toast

• in a salad, warmed up or not

• on a pizza

• as a basis for a delicious pasta sauce

• on a toasted slice of sourdough bread, topped with ricotta and basil

• in addition to a fresh dipping sauce consisting of avocado, Greek yogurt and some lemon juice

• and evidently to be used to pimp many other dishes; you can't think of any possible food pairing or these distinctive-flavoured tomatoes will fit perfectly!