The heaters are on high. I’m speaking in a voice that I hope sounds husky like Dietrich but fear sounds more nasal like Kermit. The tissue box beside me is emptying as quickly as the bin fills. I’m sneezing. I’m about to return to the kitchen, on my mother’s long-distance urging, to heat equal quantities of honey, lemon and olive oil. (Should I add rum?) I’ve checked the forecast and there’s snow in the mountains and frost in the morning.
Yet for dinner, I’ve just thrilled to the best tomatoes I’ve found in a year. All through our southern hemisphere summer, as my carefully tended tomato vines struggled, then died, I searched. The tomato specialist at the Queen Victoria markets. Through farmers’ markets and caring greengrocers. Nothing. I gave up on finding a decent tomato. Then, on a drive out of town on the weekend, the car heater on, there they were. At a roadside fruit barn, little hydroponic tomatoes that could almost have been mistaken for cherry tomatoes. They looked divine. Smelt divine. They danced in that big wooden crate as though they were characters in a children's picture book begging to come home with me. It seemed wrong and I hesitated but the decision was out of my hands.
Two lovely, simple dinners. No recipes needed.
1. Roasted Rare Salmon with a Simple Salad: The salad can include fresh sliced tomatoes, Lebanese cucumber, Ligurian olives, shaved fennel, freshly ground black pepper, sea salt, excellent olive oil. Preheat your oven to 200°degrees. Brush each side of a fillet of salmon (one fillet per person) with good olive oil and season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Bake for 5 minutes if you like rare salmon. More if you like it cooked through. Toss the salad ingredients together. Perhaps squeeze a little lemon juice over the top of it all.
2. Summer Tomato Pasta: Fundamentally, it’s hot pasta with an uncooked tomato sauce. To make your tomato sauce, roughly dice tomatoes (perhaps 200g per person), toss, generously, in the best olive oil you can afford (perhaps 2-3 tablespoons per person), add crushed garlic, freshly ground black pepper and sea salt to taste, scatter in torn fresh basil leaves. When pasta is cooked (you should use the best durum wheat spaghetti you can find and cook it in frenzied boiling salted water), drain, and toss with the tomato mixture. Sprinkle with real Parmigiano Reggiano.
