What do you do with a load of tomatoes freshly picked from your poly tunnel??

You fire up the wood oven and make your own Roasted Tomato Passata! We used the recipe in River Cottage Handbook 'Preserves' by Pam Corbin. 

Chop the tomatoes if they are a bit on the large side together with your shallots shallots and put them into a roasting tin.

The first picture shows an assortment of 'Yellow Perfection', 'Chocolate Cherry' and 'Dolce Vita'.

The red tomatoes in the second picture are the amazing 'Country Taste', a really meaty and juicy tomato.

Sprinkle a load of herbs on such as marjoram, rosemary and purple basil. Splash a good load of olive oil and toss the tomatoes so that they get a good covering.

Put your trays into your wood oven and don't forget the odd aubergine or two for company. Don't ask what the temperature is as I go by the look of the bricks and feel of radiating heat!!

We were going to cook pizzas after this so the dome and floor was going to get pretty hot. The bricks in the background have started to go white and that tells me that the oven is getting the right temperature.

See the black soot on the bricks on the left? that part needs to get hotter so after the veggies cooked I stoked the heat up.

After about 40 mins with a turn every now and then the tomatoes looked like this.

They were then whizzed up in a food processor, strained through a sieve and then poured into sterilised kilner jars.

Result - a lovely smokey taste to the passata.

We also reduced some passata to make tomato ketchup.