Roasted Tomatoes

saving summer in a jar

How I bottled summer, garlic, and slug revenge into one slow-roasted miracle

I had a glut last year. Not in the biblical sense, but enough tomatoes to make me stare at them in mild panic. This, despite the Great Slug Apocalypse — a veritable gastropod Götterdämmerung that descended on the garden early in the season.

I took to patrolling at night with a torch and a grim sense of duty, picking them off one by one like a Victorian governess dispatching lice. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. Just.

In my experience, the outdoor bush varieties aren’t quite as sweet as the modern hybrid vines that thrive in a greenhouse — but Tumbling Toms do hold their own. They’ve got that proper tomatoey flavour, a little burst of sunshine with a pleasantly thick skin that gives a satisfying pop when you bite into them. That skin’s also their armour, protecting them — ever so slightly — from the ravages of pests.

You can grow them in hanging baskets if you’re feeling whimsical, but the baskets are small, so watering and feeding becomes a daily game of catch-up. Much better, I’ve found, to give them a bit of room to stretch. The ones I planted in 16- and 20-litre pots grew into glorious beasts and gave me a frankly indecent number of tomatoes.

The tomatoes survived, albeit a little chewed around the edges, and by August I had a jungle of outdoor varieties — Tumbling Tom, Red Alert — spilling from their pots and beds. Some were perfect. Many weren’t. But after all that effort, I couldn’t bring myself to waste a single one.

So, inspired in spirit by Nigel Slater — though in practice, entirely improvised — I decided to turn the whole lot into a roasted tomato preserve. Something Italians might call conserva di pomodoro, although mine was less recipe, more culinary ramble.

Into a couple of large baking trays I chucked every tomato I had — good, bad, and misshapen. Then I paused. Because when you’ve gone to the trouble of growing your own tomatoes — watering, weeding, protecting them from slugs and fate — there’s really no excuse for skimping on what you add to them. So: proper, coarse sea salt. A couple of generous glugs of decent olive oil, the kind that makes you feel like you’re on holiday. A whole bulb of garlic, and not the sad, pallid kind — you want fierce, punchy, properly hot garlic. A sprig of rosemary, ideally cut from a rampant bush outside your back door. And a generous smattering of cracked black pepper.

It also turned out to be the most useful thing to have when people came over. A few spoonfuls dolloped on hot ciabatta or crunchy bread — and you’ve got an instant bruschetta moment. Add a few olives and a sliver of cheese, and suddenly you look like someone who’s planned everything, instead of someone who just opened a jar.

If there’s a trick, it’s this: make sure it’s properly cooked down. If there’s too much liquid or it’s underdone, it risks fermenting in the jar, and that’s a tragic end to a noble tomato.

It’s also worth noting that the outdoor varieties didn’t take up any precious greenhouse real estate — space I’d reserved for vine tomatoes and my ever-demanding chillies. And yet, they were the ones that ended up keeping me fed through winter. A quiet triumph. So if you find yourself staring at too many Tumbling Toms this year, don’t despair. There’s a solution — and it smells incredible. Happy roasting.