Simplicity = Heaven

Tonight was lazy food night. The night where you use up whatever is lurking in the larder to make fast but tasty food. We had sweet tomatoes chopped with chunks of feta cheese with french bread. Simple but heavenly. The salty cheese provided the perfect counterpoint to the sweetness of the tomatoes. 

Roasted Garlicy Tomato Soup

The starting platform for this soup is my roasted tomatos.

1 knob of butter
1 or 2 onions depending on the quantities of tomatos you used (I tend to go with 1 onion per oven proof dish of tomatos)
Roasted garlicy tomatos
Roasted garlic bulb
Crusty french loaf to serve with

Melt the butter in a saucepan, add your diced onion and cook it gently until the onion softens but isnt browned.

Take the cooled roasted tomatos, garlic and the onion and blend it. If you are making large quantities and have to blend it separately, make sure that you have tomato, garlic and onion in each mixture. Place it all in a large saucepan and heat. Serve it with crusty bread.

The lemon the tomatos were roasted with help cut through the sweetness of the tomato and the roasted garlic. The soup being mostly tomatos ends up with a rich red colour and keeps well so can be made the day before.

Roasted Garlicy Tomatos

These fill your kitchen with a lovely aromatic smell conjuring up the scent of the Mediterranean.

Tomatos (at least 6)

1 Bulb of Garlic, top and bottom cut off

1 Fresh Lemon

Salt, Pepper and Olive Oil to season.

Cut the tomatos in half and place up in an oven proof dish. Cut the lemon in half, squeeze the juice of one half across the tomatos, add the garlic bulb to the middle and then drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper across the whole lot.

Put the dish in the oven at 180 degrees for 30 minutes and then turn off the oven leaving the tomatos inside to cool.

I love these because they are so versatile:

• Serve them piled on bruschetta, roughly chopped with basil leaves as a snack or starter
• Add it to an antipasti platter alongside some cold meats, cheese and crusty bread
• As a base for a pasta sauce, chop or blend it and add pancetta or bacon
• As a base for tomato soup

Tomato Salad

This is simplicity itself and a taste of pure heaven as well.

Tomato Salad

• 2-3 large ripe tomatos
• 1 lemon
• salt and pepper to taste

Slice the tomatoes, sprinkle liberally with the lemon juice, salt and pepper. Cover and leave for at least 10 minutes. I love this on its own, served with at most some crusty bread.
If you want something more substantial you can add:

• slices of mozzarella
• cubes of feta cheese
• crispy bacon bits

Or a combination there of.

I also use this as part of an antipasta plate, adding cold meats, usually salami and bresaola, a handful of olives and some crusty bread smeared with pesto or tapenade.

On the hunt for the perfect Tomato soup

When he was little, my other half went through a phase of only eating Heinz Tomato Soup. It didnt matter where in the world he went, he only wanted that and no other brand would do.


Which leads me to my current dilemma, obviously now he eats pretty much everything so thats not the problem. No, my issue is, how to make the perfect soup. We have tomatos everywhere so thats not it. Ive been experimenting with a variety of recipes but all of them fall a bit short, too sweet, too sour, too rich and so on.



My task this week then is to try and make a soup Im happy with, one i want to eat again and again. Im going to start with a gazpacho as its still fairly warm and muggy here.

Tomato Heaven

The greenhouse is loaded with tomatos. When you enter the heavy sweet scent assails you, enticing you into a leafy grotto where the fruit hangs like rubies.

We cant eat them fast enough. Salads loaded with them, roasted in stews, raw on their own with a sprinkling of salt and crammed into fresh crusty bread with cheese. Yet they are still winning, for every one we eat, another four seem to ripen and take its place.

One of my favourite quick snacks/salad is:

• 2 or 3 tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 1 avocado, roughly chopped
• half a cucumber, sliced
• blue cheese, crumbled into chunks
• salt and pepper to taste with the juice of half a lemon or lime squeezed over it

Its simple, fresh and tasty.