voices in food.
MY TIPS FOR TIP-TOP TOMATOES
PHOTOGRAPH: ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
• All you really need to know is, if it doesn’t smell like a tomato, it isn’t going to taste like a tomato. Follow your nose.
If, like me, you’re quite a lazy person, pull up a lawn chair and come sit under my parasol. It’s here. Summer is our season. For a start, more hours of daylight allow for languorous evenings in the garden or local park, giving us the opportunity to cram an extra shift of leisure and pleasure into each day.
• When you get them home, store them at room temperature – keeping tomatoes in the fridge kills the flavour and makes the flesh woolly. If they’re not quite ready, leave on a sunny windowsill or in a brown paper bag for a few days to ripen.
Much of our cooking becomes assembling. With a bit of luck, the sunshine has done all the hard work for us, presenting us with luscious salads, juicy stone fruit and sweetly scented berries so ripe they stain our fingers and lips – because who can wait to eat them with a spoon? Wash, chop, put on a plate, dress and you’re done. Maybe light the grill if you’re feeling energetic, but don’t overdo it.
• Lacklustre toms can sometimes be retrieved by roasting. Halve them, arrange in a roasting tin, season with salt and pepper and trickle with a little olive oil – you can also add garlic and thyme if you like – then roast at 140°C fan/gas 3 for an hour. Eat them as they are or purée them for a sauce or soup. No one will ever know they weren’t lovingly grown on a Neapolitan hillside.