We had a good crop of beautiful organic tomatoes this year. We had both cherry tomatoes and beefsteak tomatoes and we grew way more than what we could eat so I decided to semi dry and preserve them in olive oil.

Ingredients 

Tomatoes
Light olive oil (enough to cover the tomatoes)
3 cloves of garlic
1 Table spoon of salted capers
1 Teaspoon of dried basil

Method

Cut the cherry tomatoes in half and the larger tomatoes into 1cm (about a third of an inch) slices.

Dry the tomatoes in a dehydrator for 12 hours at 60 degrees C (about 140 F).

Place enough jars and their lids in a oven heated to 120 degrees C (about 250 F) for 30 minutes. Leave the jars in the hot oven until you are ready to use them.

Heat up the olive oil with the three cloves of finely sliced garlic, a table spoon of salted capers and a teaspoon of dried basil. Heat the oil until it starts to cook the garlic then it take it off the heat. You don’t want to really cook the garlic, it’s heated just to help infuse the flavours into the oil and help with keeping things sterile.

Pour a little of the hot oil with the garlic, basil and capers into each the hot sterilised jars and then place the semi dried tomatoes in the jars a little at a time, covering them with a little more hot oil as you fill up the jar.

If you try this, I’d suggest that the oil pouring is done in the kitchen sink in case the jar breaks. Needless to say, hot oil can cause very serious burns so take care at all times.

To western eyes, Hindu temples look very colourful and exotic. So different from the European influenced churches we are used to looking at.

When I was in France I visited the famous Chartres Cathedral and listened to John James (the world renowned expert on Chartres) give a lecture about it. One of the facts that I found very interesting was that the old Gothic churches used to be painted in bright life-like colours just like the Hindu and Buddhist temples are painted nowadays. Apparently researchers have found traces of paint on the old cathedral’s stonework and there are also ancient accounting records still in existence of the of the painting work that was done.

Anyone who has looked at more than a few of my posts will know that I like bright rich colours and I find it a bit sad that the old churches aren’t painted any more (it got too expensive). I’d love to see an old Gothic church painted up like how they did it in the old days. The medieval age was a lot more colourful than I think that many people of today, would imagine.