View of the Solar Drier

The year 2020 has been a challenge for everyone everywhere. We escaped to the cortijo on 13th March 2020, just before the first COVID lockdowns were introduced in Spain, and we’ve been here ever since. For the first time in 10 years, we haven’t had volunteers to help us and there’s just been the two of us. We’ve continued to plant and grow things and had a good year in terms of vegetables and fruit, but this year we wanted to see if we could be more self-sufficient throughout the winter months. And so we started drying things. At first, we used the electric dryer but then John developed a much more efficient solar drier and chopped or sliced aubergines, butternut squashes, green peppers, tomatoes, courgettes, etc. would dry in 24 hours. There is more information about the solar drier on this page.

Dried Food

My mission at the moment is to find tasty and delicious recipes to make with the dried vegetables. I’ll include the successful recipes in blog posts below.

COURGETTES

Courgettes seem to work best in dishes if they are placed in boiling water for 2-3 hours beforehand. They can then be incorporated into a recipe and cooked for around 30-40 minutes so that they are soft.

Here are some recipes using dried courgettes:

Dried courgette, potato and ham in a tomato sauce