Foodie Friday Challenge – Let’s Talk About Food – A Glut of Tomatoes

Welcome to the Foodie Friday Challenge. Let’s talk about food. Whether it’s sharing your favourite recipes, growing fruit and vegetables, your harvest ups and downs, hints and tips, or pictures of plates of food – even diets. If it’s food-related, why not post it on your blog and add it to the Foodie Friday Blog Hop (For further details, please see below)? With a name like Piglet, as you can imagine, I love chatting about food!

What to do with a glut of tomatoes?

This week, I picked a bumper crop of tomatoes—9lb in one harvest—probably our best ever! I am surprised because last year, we never picked that many toms for the whole season, let alone in one go! Most of the tomato plants I raised from seed and were saved from last year’s crop. Black tomatoes, dare I say, seem to like our microclimate.

Mr P suggested tomato soup (I’ll let him take charge of that as I detest tomato soup). Then I remembered a recipe I used back in 2010 for Tomato and Courgette (Zucchini) Chutney, and I made that. I am also going to freeze some chopped tomatoes to add to the bolognese sauce. Tomato salad?

If you have any further suggestions or recipes for utilizing a glut of tomatoes, please share.

Tomato and Courgette (Zucchini) Chutney

Ingredients (kg approx)
2lb courgettes (zucchini) (peeled) (1kg)
1lb 8oz tomatoes (700g)
1lb 4oz onions (650g)
1lb 4oz brown sugar (650kg)
1 head of garlic
Fresh ginger (or 2 teaspoons of dried ginger)
1 tsp salt
½ tsp cayenne pepper (or piri piri)
¼ tsp black pepper
* 1 pint malt vinegar (480ml) I used white wine vinegar.

Note: The imperial pint is 568 mls in the United Kingdom, and a US pint is  473 mls

Method

Dice all the vegetables into small squares (roughly about ¼” square) and place them in a large open pan. Add vinegar, sugar and spices and bring slowly to the boil, stirring now and again. Simmer for at least 2hrs until thick (liquid has reduced)

Pour into heated, sterilized jars and seal.

(To sterilize jars, wash thoroughly and heat in the oven at 180 °C for 10 minutes.) I sterilized metal lids with rubber or plastic seals with hot water. Haha … I once put them in the oven, and I melted the seals.

I would have doubled the quantity, but I needed more jars.

Store in a cool, dark place. Allow the chutney to mature for 3-4 months. Refrigerate once opened.

I love eating homemade chutney with cheese or pâté.

Mr Piglet made some delicious tomato soup.

Harvest Salad with Mozzarella Cheese

Love the colour! Tomatoes, yellow pepper, red onion, cucumber, mint and chives. All from my garden.

Phew! I still have many more tomatoes to harvest. This is just one of the beds.

How to Join the Foodie Friday Challenge Blog Hop

Let’s talk about food, whether it’s sharing your favourite recipes, growing fruit and vegetables, your harvest ups and downs, hints and tips, or pictures of plates of food – even diets. If it’s food-related, why not post it on your blog and add it to the Foodie Friday Blog Hop

• Create a post about food, such as sharing your favourite recipes, growing fruit and vegetables, etc and include the tag: Foodie Friday. You’re welcome to use previous ‘food-related’ posts.
• Link to my weekly food share post to create a pingback, and I will endeavour to visit and comment.
• You are welcome to include the Foodie Friday badge on your blog. If you can’t save it from the image below, please send me an email, and I’ll send it as a jpeg.
• Don’t forget to add a link to your post when you comment below so we can keep track and support each other.
• Please check out other bloggers’ posts – like and comment.
• tag #foodiefriday

Related Posts:

Tarte à la tomate et au chèvre – Piglet’s “Foodie Friday” recipe challenge