I love Fallon and Byrne and their tomato selection looks beautiful and contains lots of lovely heirloom tomatoes as well as trusty cherry and plums. I buy loads each week and love these 2 recipes as well as just eating them as is with olive oil and sea salt.

Slow cooked cherry tomatoes

These tomatoes are really easy to prepare. It is a great way to add extra flavour when they are a bit anaemic. Sadly our Irish tomatoes are often best cooked this way because they have had so little sun on their bones and really are a bit lacking flavour wise. I remember the first time I went to Tuscany and buying plum tomatoes in a market and the smell of them was amazing and I just ate them with a little salt and olive oil and it was like I had never tasted a tomato before in my life, the flavour was just so different from the ones at home…. Amazing how memories are so often associated with smell.

Eat these in your favourite salad – I love them with other uncooked heirloom tomatoes, lovely with mozzarella, olive tapenade, great on pizzas.

Cut some cherry tomatoes in half across their equator and place on a baking tray.
Sprinkle over some finely chopped thyme and rosemary
Season with sea salt
Drizzle with a little olive oil and place in the oven at 80 Deg C for an hour or two.
Remove from the oven when soft but not disintegrated.

Fresh Tomato Sauce

There are loads of uses for this sauce, great in any casserole, especially yummy in a shellfish casserole, great with chicken, vegetable ratatouille… let me know what you use it for!.

1 lb cherry tomatoes washed and cut in half
4-5 Cloves of garlic with skin left on
Sea salt and black pepper
Balsamic vinegar
Olive oil
Pinch or 2 of Sugar…don’t omit as it will be bitter without!

Heat oven to 180C

Place cherry tomatoes cut side up on flat baking tray
Add the garlic cloves – skin on
Season well with salt and pepper
Add a few dashes of olive oil and balsamic vinegar
Sprinkle over a pinch or 2 of sugar

Bake in the oven until garlic is soft and the tomatoes are cooked through – about 10-15 minutes.
Blend everything and then pass through a sieve. Use the back of a spoon to push all the juice through – the skins of the garlic and tomatoes will be left behind in the pulp in the sieve which you discard.

Enjoy and let me know how you like your tomatoes…