Roast Chicken and Balsamic Sun-dried Tomatoes Sandwich Spread

If there is only one culinary accomplishment you aim for, let it be to convince the family that sandwiches are a plausible, substantial meal. If you go back in time (before Subway), sandwiches were regarded as a snack, or ‘picnic’ food – a.k.a. not a real meal and nothing that ‘standing kho-kho’, motion sickness and mild sunstroke could send into “repeat”.
 

But we’ve come a long way from the sliced cheese, tomato and white bread constructs (admittedly, a beautiful, nostalgic flavour forever sweetened in my mind with the taste of slightly warm apple juice and the smell of ‘the bus’). Now, within ½ km of where I live, there are at least three, non-franchise sandwich places where you can build-your-own proscuitto, brie and arugula on multi-grain bread, tuna salad on rye or buy bagels laden with goat-cheese and honey.

Some days, for friends, family or fuss-pot kids, we bring the toaster into the hall, butter, olive oil, meats, cheeses, olives, leaves, sliced tomatoes, onions…. A slice of ham here, a smudge of mustard there, everyone constructs their own dinner and perhaps reminded of picnics, the mood invariably turns celebratory and there is always much laughter at the table.

 Ingredients for Balsamic Sun-Dried Tomatoes 

½ kilo of tomatoes, sliced into 1 cm wedges *

4 pods of garlic

4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon Rosemary or parsley chopped

½ tsp of salt

 *(I used 250 gms of orange cherry tomatoes which I bruised, 2 normal, red tomatoes and about ½ a red pepper that I found skulking in the back of my vegetable drawer)

Method: 

In a bowl, stir all the ingredients around except the tomatoes and the salt. Now brush the bottom of an oven-proof tray with olive oil (if you’re using a regular oven and metal tray, you may want to put a sheet of foil down). Arrange the wedges of tomato so that they’re not really overlapping and pour the oil, vinegar, herb, garlic mix over evenly. Sprinkle some salt.

Put the tray into a warm oven – (I’m afraid I’m rubbish at telling you what temperature it should be. When my oven was working, I’d put it on 1 – that’s less than 100 degrees) and keep the tomatoes gently de-hydrating in the oven for about 5 hours.

For this recipe, I put the tomatoes in the microwave oven on the grill setting and left it there for 1 hour. They were far from sun-dried but had a deliciously sweet-roasted-slightly charred flavour to them.

For the Spread:

Take equal parts sun-dried tomatoes and plain roast chicken, about half a part of black olives and a big bunch of fresh parsley and puree roughly. You will get a gorgeous mix of colours – red, black, green, gold that has the texture of country-style pate and some of the smokiness as well. Now spread on toast or crackers with a simple leafy salad on the side.