Sunday

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

A quick recipe:

Sometimes, all I want in the world is a roasted tomato. British tomatoes are so sad and dull and flavourless that this is really the only way to get some taste into them. I still remember with yearning the time I went to stay with my friend Sophie in San Francisco, and we went to a restaurant where they brought the heirloom tomatoes out on a special tomato trolley, and you chose, and then they solemnly sliced them in front of you and anointed them with grassy olive oil and laid them reverentially on the table. Why is it that the Americans have proper respect for the tomato while we do not?

Anyway, this is also a good way to use up slightly old tomatoes, which is what I had hanging about today. looking rather balefully at me.

Chop them in half; lay in a roasting dish; put a pinch of finely chopped garlic on each one; then very slightly more sea salt than you think; then a sprinkle of basil or parsley; then a good drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. I apologise for using the world drizzle.

Cook at about 160 for about forty-five minutes. You can cook them for twenty-five minutes at 200, but I find the lower, slower cooking produces a better taste.

I am going to eat mine with a bloody steak, because I always need the iron, but they come out so lovely you could just have them on their own.

And if there are any entrepreneurs reading this, won't you please set up an heirloom tomato business, so I can get those lovely green and yellow and amber beauties that I remember with so much affection from my days on the west coast? Is it too much to ask to have a tomato that actually tastes of something? And why have the good, patient Britons put up with it for so long?

Pictures appear to be almost exclusively very, very close shots of wood. Do not ask me why.