Flavoured Salts

What do you do when beautiful ruby red plump juicy truss tomatoes are in season and on sale? Inspired by both Chow.com's bloody mary salt recipe and that tomatoes are in season, I decided to try making Bloody Mary Salt.



This salt is great for finishing a steak, rimming the glass of your favourite cocktail, or on your eggs in the morning! Or a medley of other ideas that your hunger can come up with.

You'll need:

For the dried tomatoes (the original recipe just calls for sun-dried tomatoes that are not packed in oil)
3 ripe truss tomatoes
Olive Oil
Sea Salt

Other ingredients:
Tobasco Sauce
Worchestershire Sauce
Sea Salt Flakes

First the tomatoes. Feel free to use bought dried tomatoes and skip this step - I just felt that it was such a waste of such marvelous produce!

Pre-heat your oven to 180C.

Slosh a few glugs of olive oil (don't over do it, trust me) over tomato halves in a roasting tray.



Liberally sprinkle sea salt over the tomatoes. Don't worry about over-salting - this is the basis for a flavoured salt, so having the tomatoes on the salty side to start off with is not going to matter much.



Roast the tomatoes till they are nice and juicy, with a slightly charred edge. Take the tomatoes out of the oven and leave to cool.

Now for the tricky part. If you have a dehydrator (like I do - it was a moment of weakness!), use it. Otherwise, set your fan forced oven on the lowest heat setting, and arrange the tomato halves on a cake rake that's placed over a roasting tray. Leave the tomatoes till they are dried out - they should still be slightly pliable, but dry to the touch. If you used too much oil when roasting the tomatoes, then they'll be slightly oily to the touch as well.

***If you're using store bought dried tomatoes, start reading here***

With your fan-forced oven still on the lowest heat setting, drizzle some Tobasco sauce and Worchestershire sauce on the dried tomatoes. Leave in the oven to dry out completely. The original recipe called for the tomatoes to be first cut into strips, but I quite like the pooling of the sauce in some parts of the tomatoes, giving a stronger flavour.



Either way, the tomatoes do have to end up in strips.



Then place the tomato strips in a food processor or spice grinder with some sea salt - don't plonk the whole packet in! - and start pulsing. The initial salt will help stop the tomato from sticking together. Then just add salt till you're happy with it. I kinda wished that I'd added a little less salt so you get more of the tomato, but at the end of the day, it's a finishing salt, so how wrong can you go? =)

Also, salt recipe not complicated enough for you? YOU WANT MORE???!!!!

*evil laugh*



Excuse the bad picture.

Some time ago, I had this idea in my head that I wanted to make a clear bloody mary. I was experimenting with gazpacho recipes, and realised that fresh tomato juice is actually...clear.

So.

I pureed the extra truss tomatoes, a couple of sticks of celery, part of a clove of garlic, and strained the lot in a clean piece of muslin.

Then, just rim a shot glass with the bloody mary salt by going round the edge with a wedge of lemon, then dipping it in the salt.

Add a touch of vodka into the shotglass, and then top up with the tomato/vegetable juice.

Et voila!!!! A clear interpretation of a bloody mary. =)

I hope you've enjoyed my interpretation of this recipe, and if you've read this far, I thank you muchly!!

I'll try to squeeze in another post before Christmas, but if I don't, Happy Holidays everyone!!!