I was given a box of tomatoes by my friendly herb dealer. They were the last of the season (in the middle of winter mind you) and as such were a bit mushy. A friend lent me her tomato press so that I could make passata with them. This machine takes the whole tomato in through a funnel and spits out the flesh into a bowl and the skins and seeds into a side chute to be disposed of. I turned the flesh into a nice passata by slow cooking it with oregano, garlic and salt and then jarred it up for later use.

But I was unwilling to throw away the masses of skin and seed. The skins hold so much flavour as well as good nutrients and it seemed such a waste to get rid of them. So instead I spread them out on some baking trays lined with baking paper. I then put a good layer of rock salt on top of the tomato skins and put the trays in the sun.

A couple of days later I had a heap of salt with a rosy blush and a nice background taste of tomato. The salt needed to be scrapped off the top of the now, dried up skins below. I did then dry the salt by itself for another day to get rid of any residual moisture.

It was now ready to go into my salt grinder as is or ground up ready to sprinkle on eggs, fish, avocadoes or even slices of tomato. Yum.