SUNDRIED TOMATO, HERB AND CHEESE LOAF

Having made your sundreied tomatoes this is a good receipe to show them off. Serve with good cheese, salami or ham, olives and a salad for a complete lunch! You could follow this with a fruit salad - it is really all that is needed.

50 g sundried tomatoes -- chopped

1 medium onion -- chopped 2 sticks celery with leaves -- chopped 3 large cloves garlic -- crushed 10 ml dried mixed herbs 500 g self-raising flour -- (830 ml) 5 ml baking powder 5 ml salt 500 ml milk 1 extra large egg 100 g mature cheddar cheese -- (250 ml) Preheat oven to 180°C. Drain the oil off the tomatoes and heat oil in a medium sized pan. Sauté onion, celery and garlic until vegetables are soft. Remove from heat. Stir in the sundried tomatoes and mixed herbs and allow to cool. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl. Beat the milk and egg together and stir in the cheese. Add the vegetable and milk mixtures to the dry ingredients and mix well. Transfer dough to a greased loaf tin. Bake in preheated oven for 50 - 60 minutes. Turn bread out and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Sundried Tomatoes

As usual we have a glut of tomatoes and having made tomato sauces and eaten tomatoes till they come out of our ears I had to think of something different.

I sun dried them in the Microwave!

Worked really well - I did not get the usual leathery product but a dry fully flavoured product.

You can use any tomatoes you have and I used a mixture of plum, ordinary round and cherry varieties. You can add whole garlic cloves or a sprig of rosemary for extra flavour.

This is what I did - placed them in one layer in a Pyrex dish and microwaved for 10 minutes at 720 power. i then drained off the excess liquid (kept that for cooking) and put them back for about 5 minutes.

I then turned them over and microwaved for another 5 minutes.

They were just starting to get leathery at this point - I left them for 5 minutes to cool down then put them into a jar with olive and sunflower oil mixed.