From Art of Cuisine Kitchens: Autumn RECIPES

Tomato Cooking Tips:

•    For a surfeit of tomatoes. I pack large baking trays with the tomatoes and sprinkle, sea salt, white pepper and some sugar. Tuck is some thyme and plenty of garlic cloves left whole. Pour over some olive oil and roast for a couple of hours. Pass the tomatoes through a mouli and bag into rectangular containers for the freezer. This makes the most superior tomato paste, come puree and base for soups and braises during winter.
•    Tomato Tea. In a food processor, blend 3-4kgs of tomatoes in batches and tip into a very large stock pot. Add a mirepoix of lemon grass, ginger, galangal, lime leaf, curry leaf, spring onions, chilli and garlic. Season with salt, pepper and a touch of sugar. Barely cover with cold water and bring to a simmer for an hour. Turn off the heat and allow to infuse another hour. Tip all into a very large sieve placed over a clean pot and allow to drain freely for several hours or overnight. Taste for seasoning. This is a sublime consommé in its own right. It can be lightly jellied and set with seafood. It can be poured over roasted crab/prawns shells for a magical seafood broth. It can be boiled to reduce to a jam like consistency for a total tomato concentrate.
•    For Roma tomatoes: split tomatoes in half lengthwise. Place onto a flat baking tray lined with bakers paper. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, sugar and sumac. Place in a low oven for at least a couple of hours until tomatoes have the texture of moist dried fat apricots. Delicious as a base for a tomato tarte, or a salad.
•    An incomparable Salad. Pick tomatoes fresh from the garden and NEVER REFRIGERATE. Slice and intersperse the varieties and different colours onto a large platter. Sprinkle with sea salt, freshly ground white pepper and a scant sprinkling of sugar. Drizzle a fine sherry vinegar. Top with a chiffonade of basil, a crumbling of Shanklish (a yogurt based semi-dried cheese rolled in oregano) cheese. And finest extra virgin olive oil. Prepare up to an hour ahead of service so the exquisite juices develop. This makes a surprising change from the classical Mozzarella or Bocconcini-  based salads. Shanklish is a Syrian or Lebanese cheese made from goat’s or cow’s milk, formed into orange-sized balls and coated with the tangy spice mixture za’atar.

Let Them Eat Cake:
Dutifully laying chooks, and thereby an abundance of eggs has turned me back to baking as a way to use up such treasures.
Those oversized, over-iced and over decorated cakes you see about cafés these days are anathema to my idea of what a fine cake should be about:  elegant, moist, intensely flavoured with a modest portion offering immense satisfaction. For a friend’s recent birthday I resurrected an old Alice Waters recipe for marzipan cake that came out of the oven saffron coloured. It was deemed luscious, even by the youngsters.
This cakes also keeps well for up to a week, well covered in the refrigerator, but like most cakes is best the day it is baked.

Almond Torte

1 ¼ cup c sugar
250 gms soft crumbled pure almond paste (marzipan)
280gm unsalted butter
1 t vanilla essence
6 eggs at room temperature
1 c plain flour sieved with
1 ½ t baking powder
¼ t salt
50 ml amaretto

•    cream sugar, almond paste and butter until white and fluffy….about 20 minutes
•    once base is creamed add eggs one at a time
•    fold in flour and amaretto
•    place into shallow 28cm cake tine lined with bakers paper
•    bake 1 – 1 ¼ hrs in a medium hot oven (170 degrees C) until top is golden and centre has set.
•    cool in tin, running knife to loosen edges. Unmould when cold. May be refrigerated, covered up to 7 days.
•    to serve, dredge with icing sugar