Cherry tomatoes.

Over the last couple of days the cherry tomato plants have produced more tomatoes than we've had for about 2 weeks.  And as much as I like them, I can't keep up with that amount and unfortunately John doesn't really like them at all.  He'll eat sliced tomatoes in salads and once they are made into sauces and used in meals that's fine too.  Luckily we only planted 2 cherry tomato plants, we have more of the big tomatoes - a variety called Simone - and those we sundry and store.

A friend told me her sister in Malta bottles tomatoes in brine so I had a google today to see what strength brine, how long they keep etc.  Lots of info out there as you'd expect and as normal lots of the same info on different sites and forums.  So with my bit of paper full of notes about salt to water ratios I headed to the kitchen.

Low salt pickles are a 3.5% brine,    the old 'float an egg and that's strong enough'  idea is about 10% brine but then the vegetables need 24 hours of soaking in clean water before eating,  most of the sites I read today had  1/4 cup salt to 1 quart water but those are American measures and they have a different pint to us (and anyway how big is a cup??)  so I have used this amount......
3 tablespoons sea salt to 2 pints water  which is about the low salt ratio.  

First make the brine, boil the water, add the salt and leave to cool.
Then rinse and dry the tomatoes,  put into a nice wide neck ex-pickle jar, cover to about 3 cms below the top of the jar with brine and top up with olive oil to keep a seal.  Screw on the lid - they apparently keep for 9 to 10 months. 

If the jar doesn't explode or do anything silly like that in the next few days then I'll do some more.  I thought about drying them but they'd shrink down to something very tiny - although very intense in flavour I'm sure.