Rachel Roddy, writing in her long-running A Kitchen in Rome column, has published a recipe for spaghetti dressed with semi-dried tomatoes, garlic, herbs and toasted breadcrumbs. The dish is designed to make use of tomatoes dried at home, a process Roddy describes as part science, part guesswork, and one she has spent this summer refining through trial and error.
Roddy explains that she first received guidance on sun-drying tomatoes while in Sicily, where she was told the process could take anywhere from two to seven days depending on temperature, humidity, wind and the size of the fruit. She found that advice too vague to be useful, comparing it to being handed a surfboard and told simply "go".
How do you semi-dry tomatoes at home?
A second source gave Roddy far more specific instructions: with temperatures around 35C and low humidity, egg-sized tomato halves arranged cut-side up on wire racks over wooden boards, salted and left in direct sun during the day but brought indoors overnight, generally reached the right texture after three days. The goal is a tomato that is dry enough to store but still pliable, with a sweet, chewy centre.
Roddy found this level of detail almost as unhelpful as the vague version, since it raised further questions about what to do if the weather turned humid, if rain arrived, or if the tomatoes were larger or smaller than an egg. In practice, working with temperatures swinging between the low 20Cs and the high 30Cs and 40Cs, occasional humidity and rain, and admittedly limited organisation on her part, she has still managed to dry batches of tomatoes of various sizes with reasonable success.
Through this experimentation, Roddy discovered a preference for a semi-dried result rather than a fully dried one: tomato halves that are leathery on the outside but soft and toffee-like within, similar to jarred sun-dried tomatoes sold in British supermarkets in the late 1980s. This summer she has produced several batches of semi-dried cherry tomatoes, either left outside on wire racks in direct sun for two days, bringing them in overnight, or baked in the oven at 130C for around an hour with a little added sugar, leaving them in the cooling oven afterwards if needed. Larger tomatoes, closer in size to an egg yolk or a whole egg, require longer. The aim in either method is tomatoes that are wrinkled and slightly dry on top while remaining juicy and sweet inside. Roddy recommends preparing at least a kilogram, ideally two, so that some can be stored in a jar covered in olive oil while the rest go into this week's pasta dish.
What makes this pasta dish distinctive?
The recipe pairs the semi-dried tomatoes with thinly sliced garlic, a peeled and crushed fresh tomato, minced parsley and basil, and breadcrumbs toasted in olive oil until lightly golden. Spaghetti, linguine or tagliatelle is cooked and then tossed directly in the pan with the garlic and tomato mixture before the herbs are added, with the toasted breadcrumbs scattered on top at the plate. Roddy suggests offering diners the jar of oil-covered semi-dried tomatoes on the side and inviting them to guess whether the batch used took two hours in the oven or two days in the sun to prepare.
How does this fit into Roddy's wider column?
This tomato pasta recipe follows an earlier entry in the same column, Rachel Roddy's orecchiette with courgettes, parmesan cream and almonds, published in late June 2026, which similarly built a pasta dish around a single seasonal vegetable at its peak. Together the two recipes reflect a consistent approach in Roddy's writing this summer: taking one abundant ingredient and working through the practical, sometimes fiddly, steps needed to prepare it well before folding it into a simple pasta.
According to Roddy's food profile on 's website, the A Kitchen in Rome column remained active through late July and into early August 2026, with another instalment appearing on 30 July 2026, according to Rachel Roddy's author profile. The series' own archive page shows further updates continuing into that period, with the listing itself refreshed on 7 August 2026, according to the A Kitchen in Rome series page, indicating the column has kept a steady weekly rhythm across the summer months.
Key Facts
- Recipe: spaghetti, linguine or tagliatelle with semi-dried tomatoes, garlic, fresh crushed tomato, parsley, basil and toasted breadcrumbs, serving four.
- Preparation time for the tomatoes ranges from about two hours in the oven at 130C to two days of sun-drying outdoors.
- Roddy recommends preparing at least 1kg, ideally 2kg, of semi-dried tomatoes, using half in the pasta and storing the rest in olive oil.
- The recipe follows Roddy's late-June orecchiette dish in the same A Kitchen in Rome column, which continued publishing into early August 2026.
