My fridge was nearly empty, and I discovered that my tomatoes were getting wrinkly. When I touched the fruit, the skin would separate from the flesh. Knowing full well that I am a picky eater and would never eat mealy tomatoes, I felt conflicted. I had to eat them. But I wasn’t craving pasta so tomato sauce wouldn’t work. And I’m not a fan of freezing or refrigerating sauce (the ingredients separate and it doesn’t taste as good or as fresh compared to when it’s just made). I remembered a story I did for Oxygen Magazine years ago about making sun-dried tomatoes in the oven. I don’t have an archive system of my articles, so I couldn’t tell you the exact recipe or issue that it appeared in. But I do remember that it was easy: put the tomatoes in the oven on a low temperature for a long time. So that’s what I did.
It was about seven o’clock when I cut five large tomatoes into thick wedges and placed them on their backs on a tray. I got about six to eight wedges from each tomato. I didn’t use any seasonings or olive oil. Many recipes will call for that, but I didn’t bother. I set my oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit, threw in two trays of tomato wedges. I thought about them for the first hour, even checking the oven. They were still bright red and somewhat juicy. They looked like what you might see at an unattended self-serve salad bar where the foods were just sitting out far too long.
Then I did some cleaning, visited my parents, came home, went to sleep, woke up, checked Pinterest, showered, changed, and enjoyed a tea on the couch. I forgot! It was 10 am the next day when I remembered. And the tomatoes were very sun-dried. Some were crispy, some were tacky and the one I bit into was not sweet at all. I collected the once-pointy wedges that were now flat and shriveled and put them in the fridge, which moistened them up. There were about three that were overcooked and stuck to the pan or crumbled in the tongs. When I added them to a simmering tomato sauce later in the week, they plumped up a bit. They were perfect.
When I do it again, I will put a timer on my cell phone for eight hours. Lower the temperature to 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Some people cut the tomatoes in half, but I found that wedges were the perfect size because my tomatoes were quite big.
Now, if I could only find that VHS of Fried Green Tomatoes….
