I say tomato...

The Cat and I were being ladies who lunch… on our lunch break from work, this Thursday. We headed to our usual hot spot of the falafel stand in Tachbrook street market (scroll down to a previous post about the best falafel in London Town). Whilst queuing, we both spotted some vibrant jewels of yellow cherry tomatoes out of the corner of our eyes. These we had to have.

So, last night I had to decide what to do with these gems (The Cat had eaten half of hers on her train journey home on Thursday). Wanting them to ‘speak for themselves’, I decided on a very simple tomato, avocado and mozzarella salad, garnished with beautifully fragrant fresh herbs of greek basil and oregano and dressed delicately with balsamic vinegar.

Although, whilst slicing these tangy and sweet jewels in half, it became apparent I had more of the gems than I could eat all by myself in salads. I then decided that I needed to preserve them. In this case, I lined the bottom of an oven tray with halved cherry tomatoes, seasoned and sprinkled over two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, 2 cloves garlic crushed, two crushed dried chillies with a bay leaf and cinnamon stick and added plenty of the afore mentioned greek basil and organo and roasted to dry for an hour and a half at 110C.

I then placed the roasted tomatoes in a sterilised jar and topped up the gaps in the jar with rapeseed oil (yes we have converted from olive oil). I’ll be having these tomatoes for an easy pasta dinner this week, topped with lashings of grated parmesan or as a pizza/bruschetta topping.

Whilst, I was doing the above, Gipsy spread used the yellow tomatoes in his baked cod parcel, which also included capers, bay leaf and fresh herbs poached in white wine.