A couple of very quick things for you today. Super simple. Do you remember I bought some big bags of wonderful sun dried tomatoes from Healthy Supplies. They taste wonderfully fresh and tangy, the best I’ve had. If you can afford the initial outlay, they are a great cupboard standby and useful for a great many things.

Several weeks ago, I put some in a jar and covered them with olive oil to see if it would work. And work they did! They are wonderful, I’ve used them several times and they are truly delicious.

The easiest sun dried tomatoes in olive oil – ever!

100g sun dried tomatoes Healthy Supplies £9.99 /kg, £1
250ml olive oil £3/litre, 75p

Total cost £1.75, or 350g at 50p/100g, comparable cost in supermarkets also 50p/100g. Although these are the same price as Asda, supermarkets use cheap vegetable oil which would reduce the cost of ours by 65p. You could of course use any oil you like, if you use ordinary vegetable oil, each jar would cost £1.10.

Just put the tomatoes in a jar and cover with the oil. That’s it. Over the weeks, the oil will soak up the tomato flavour and the tomatoes will soften in the oil, making those delicious morsels we know and love.

N.B. Please do not add anything else to the jar, like garlic or basil leaves, both of which would taste wonderful. Tomatoes are acidic enough to not have a risk of botulism, other things may change the acidity profile.

Instant Tomato Pan Fried Focaccia

Today, I decided to try a savoury version of the pan fried bread I tried recently. I chopped up 3 tomatoes from my jar and then took out a spoonful of dough from the bowl of Magic Dough in the fridge and kneaded in the tomatoes.

In a heated frying pan, I added a spoonful of oil from the jar and gently fried the dough patty for a couple of minutes. Then flipped it over and did the other side. Some black pepper was ground over and a tiny drizzle of extra oil dribbled over. The whole thing took 5 minutes max, from bowl to plate.

It was delectable and was very similar in taste and texture to a conventional focaccia!  Because I used olive oil it gave the beautiful focaccia flavour. Vegetable oil would still give a good result, but different. These pan fried breads are proving very useful and I shall be exploring lots more flavours. Do try them, they are lovely!

For many more ways of using Magic Dough, see this post.