annie's sun-dried tomatoes

May I introduce you to my new favourite dip?

Only . . . it's not quite a dip.

It's more like a soft, plump piece of the most flavourful sun-dried tomato you can imagine hanging out next to a golden piece of garlic that spreads like butter when it hits your cracker.

The sun-dried tomato and the garlic have a bit of very good olive oil* to keep them fluid, and that's it.

I like to serve this concoction with a little wooden spoon from Japan that allows it to work in its magical twilight between liquid and solid.

You spoon it onto your cracker or crisp bread, take a bite before the oil dribbles too far down your chin, and head back for more. (But someone else has now got the spoon, so you also get to learn patience. Bonus.)

This sort-of-dip has an unusual technique. First you let the garlic soften and get golden in that good olive oil, then stir in the spices, then a bit of plum and balsamic vinegars. Finally, you stir in some plump rehydrated tomatoes.

All those additions quickly make friends and that humble sun-dried tomato becomes (so I think) the very essence of what a sun-dried tomato should be.

Many, many thanks to my friend Haruko who first introduced me to this recipe. She brought it to book club and I begged for the recipe. At the next meeting, she came with a hand-written purple recipe card.

Haruko calls this Annie's Sun-Dried Tomatoes, because her dear friend Annie gave her the recipe. Turns out, it's originally from Wilderness Cuisine by Carole Latimer. (You better believe I am going to request Wilderness Cuisine at the library right now. There. Done.)

I think this is the kind of recipe that gets around a lot between friends.


* I like like this Sicilian olive oil, which is surprisingly reasonable for its big flavour.

one year ago: cheese ball!
two years ago: spiced ginger mounds
three years ago: walnut slugs and spicy cajun almonds
four years ago: seafood chowder for a cold autumn day

annie's sun-dried tomatoes
slightly adapted from wilderness cuisine by carole latimer
yields about 1 cup

3/4 c. sun-dried tomatoes (dry)
6 tbsp. good olive oil
7 – 10 cloves garlic, peeled
1/4 tsp. paprika
1/4 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. coriander
1/4 tsp. salt
5 whole peppercorns
2 tbsp. ume (Japanese plum) or rice vinegar
1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar

Cut the garlic into thick strips (in half for a small clove, maybe 4 or 5 for a big clove). Gently heat a pan over low heat. Add the olive oil and garlic and cook for about 15 minutes. Make sure they're not burning: you just want them to slowly get golden.

While the garlic is cooking, bring the sun-dried tomatoes to a boil in a small pot with enough water for them to swim around. Let them boil for a couple minutes to rehydrate. Drain. Put the sundried tomatoes on a cutting board so they can cool down a bit. Once they are cool enough to touch, cut them into long ragged strips.

Measure the spices and add to the garlic once it's golden. Stir and cook five more minutes. Add the vinegars and cook two more minutes. Stir in the cut sun-dried tomatoes. Serve with crackers or crisp bread, or set aside to serve at room temperature. Store in the fridge if leaving out for more than a couple hours. Set out an hour ahead of time to bring to room temperature.

green beans with garlicky tomato concassé

The first real frost forecast came late last week.

After some discussion, we decided that tucking table clothes around the tomato plants probably wouldn't provide enough protection, as it had the week before.

So, Thursday night after dinner, my intrepid husband donned a headlamp and got out our biggest bowl. He came back in with his bowl full of little green tomatoes.

Now, we have two full cookie sheets of tomatoes in various stages of green to red.

But I'm not concerned.

Because I have discovered the wonderful world of tomato concassé.

I don't think I'd ever had concassé before, except maybe in a fancy restaurant where I didn't know all the names for things that happily passed by my lips.

Laura Calder, of course, knows the names for French foods, and I found this recipe for green beans with garlicky tomato concassé as part of a menu called "An Unintimidating Dinner on a Reasonable Budget"* in Dinner Chez Moi.

How could I resist?

It turns out that a concassé is this plump, velvety mass of tomato sauce that tastes like it costs  well beyond "reasonable."

I think the secret might be the mere half a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar, which somehow brightens the tomatoes but doesn't make them at all acidic. And that little teaspoon of sugar makes the tomatoes softer and more friendly, too.

Concassé is a tomato sauce transformed, and it's lovely and smooth alongside crisp green beans. Just the thing for your trays of tomatoes.

* If you're curious what else is on Laura's menu: avocado with citrus dressing, flat-roasted chicken with merguez sausages and a cake of cherries.


one year ago: beet hummus
two years ago: parsley lentil pasta
three years ago: mrs. doucet's apple chutney

green beans with garlicky tomato concassé
from Laura Calder

4 large tomatoes
2 tbsp. olive oil
2 – 3 garlic cloves, sliced
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. balsamic vinegar
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper
675 g. (1 1/2 lbs) green beans, trimmed

First, set about peeling the tomatoes. Bring a pot of water to boil. Mark a small X on the tomato bottoms and drop them into the simmering water. Leave in for 10 seconds to 1 minute to loosen the skin. Use a slotted spoon to take the tomatoes out and set the tomato water aside. Place the tomatoes in ice-cold water so they stop cooking and you can work with them sooner.

When they're cool enough, peel the tomatoes. Make thick slices and push out the seeds. Set the seeds aside to use for something else.* Chop the tomato flesh until it's a pulp.

Put a large frying pan over medium heat and heat the oil. Cook the garlic gently for up to one minute; don't let it colour. Stir in the tomato pulp, sugar, balsamic vinegar and bay leaves. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook until it becomes a thick sauce, about 20 minutes. Remove the bay leaves.

Set the tomato water over the heat again and salt it. Once it's boiling, cook the green beans until al dente, about 5 minutes. Drain the beans and put them in an ice-water bath to stop further cooking. Drain again.

Stir the beans into the tomato concassé and gently heat through. Serve.

* I like to put the juicy tomato seeds in a small bowl, season it with salt and pepper, and eat it like a fancy appetizer.