Lavender and other edible flowers

C and I were shopping yesterday when we discovered sugared violets, sugared rose petals and all kinds of other edible flowers (cornflowers, red rose petals, lavender) on sale for cake decoration.  The idea of sugared violets in cava came from a cocktail we once had in the ancient London establishment, Rules, but our recent experiment on the train from Paddington, only turned the cava bright blue.  I bought some sugared rose petals to see what affect these have.

The lavender in our garden is in full blossom at the moment.  Lavender has a bad reputation, redolent of unwanted bars of lilic soap and bunches of dried flowers bleaching on the windowsill.  However, real lavender has a heady, sensual aroma.  If you have ever walked through a field of lavender in Provence, the scent of the rising essential oils is almost narcotic.

I'm going to try and find something to I can make with it.  I found a recipe for lavender biscuits, but I just wanted to post this to remind myself.  I also chanced upon a recipe for Lavender liqueur on the Confessions of a Kitchen Witch blog.

Lavender, much underrated

Beetroot with goats' cheese

We ate this last night, sitting out in the last of the sun by way of a shared starter.  It is based on a recipe of Nigel Slater's, again taken from the Kitchen Diaries.  This doesn't really require any cooking apart from the beetroot, and the goats cheese is nice plain, we just have a lot of sage in the garden at the moment, so I thought it would be interesting to see what flavour it added to the cheese.

Beetroot with sage-rolled goats' cheese

A bunch of fresh beetroot
a small soft goats' cheese (without a rind)
four of five sprigs of fresh sage
a handful of black grapes, if you have them
a loaf of good, fresh bread (we used olive bread from Betty's)
butter to serve

Chop the tapering roots and stalks off the beetroot - if the leaves and stalks are still fresh they can be cooked up like chard (these ones weren't worth keeping, so went straight to the compost).

Place in an ovenproof dish with 1/2 inch of water and cover with tinfoil.  Cook on a medium high heat until a soft enough to spear with a knife quite easily.  Remove from the oven, rinse and peel. 

Meanwhile finely chop the sage, and roll the circumference of the cheese in the herbs.

Place the cheese on a plate with the cold beetroots and the grapes.  Serve with warm bread and butter.  My family, who are aficionados of neither beetroot nor goats' cheese ate it all with relish.

Beetroot and goats' cheese

Eton mess with blackberries and Amaretti biscuits

Eton Mess requires organised chaos, not just chaos (as occurred the first time I made it).  It's really nice with ice-cream, cream, strawberries or raspberries and crushed meringue, but I also recently made a variation with blackberries, adapted from a recipe in Vegetable Heaven by Catherine Mason.

Blackberry Eton Mess
(serves 2)

1 punnet of blackberries
1 small tub of clotted cream
six amaretti biscuits
A scattering of sugared violets (optional)

Crush the amaretti biscuits in your fingers into crumbs and set aside.

Slightly crush the blackberries with a fork, so the juices begin to escape, but not so that they've formed a pulp.




Take two glasses (tumbles size works well) and place a small layer of biscuit at the bottom.  Add a tablespoon of the clotted cream.  Push down slightly, but don't worry about it being too accurate.  Add a spoonful of the blackberry mixture, then another layer of biscuits, cream and blackberries, and on until you reach the top.  Finish off with any extra biscuits, and a few sugared violets if you have them.  Leave for an hour or so before serving.

Wikihow explains how to make your own sugared violets if you are interested.  Sometimes we drop them in Cava, although they can turn it bright blue, the sahde of the teenage Irn Bru and vodka (as I recall) favouraite, WKD.

Apple and mint jelly

3 lbs of cooking apples
as much mint as you can find (or three bags of shop mint)
1 pint of water
1 pint of cider vinegar
1 lb of sugar for every lb of liquid

Begin by chopping the apples into rough cubes.  Don't bother peeling/ coring.  Use everything.  Add to a very large and sturdy pan with the water and vinegar.  Bring to boil and add the mint (stalks and all).  However, do keep aside several handfuls of the best bits of the mint leaves (no stalks).  Put in a plastic bag and freeze.

Boil the apple mixture for 45 mins then drain through a muslin cloth (see picture).   This needs to be left for two hours or more, but generally overnight is best.  Put the jars you intend to use through the dishwasher.

The mixture in the muslin cloth (aka a clean tea-towel)

The following day, take the (cloudy) mixture and measure out. 

The cloudy apple/ mint mixture once strained

Place in a pan over a low heat and add a lb of sugar to every pint of liquid.  Bring to boil and boil vigorously, taking off the scum, until the jelly begins to gel.

Allow to cool slightly.  Take the mint out of the freezer.  While still frozen rub together quickly in the bag so that it fractures into tiny pieces.  Shake out all the mint fragments into the jelly and stir well.  Pour into the jars and allow to cool before securing the lids tightly.

The finished mint jelly

It didn't set the first time - boil for longer than you think.

Risotto with peas, fennel and sage

This is an adaptation of a Linda McCartney recipe I used to make with asparagus (from Linda McCartney's World of Vegetarian Cookery).

Risotto with peas, fennel and sage
(Serves 4)

Two thirds of a box of aborri risotto rice (sorry, I should measure these things)
1 large onion
2 cloves of garlic
a bag of fresh peas in their pods
two small fennel bulbs
olive oil or butter
1 pint + of vegetable stock
1 glass of white wine
rind and juice of a small lemon
two sprigs of fresh sage
around 25g of Gorgonzola
shavings of parmesan (to serve)
salt and pepper to taste

Shell the peas and put aside (you can also use frozen if easier).

Finly slice the fennel and place in a roasting pan with a little olive oil and pepper. 

Sliced fennel

Roast on a medium to high heat until soft and beginning to brown.  Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly.  Chop finely and put aside. 

Finely chop the onion and place in a pan with a tablespoon of mild olive oil or butter.   Cover and sweat until starting to become soft.  Add the chopped cloves of garlic.  Add the rice and stir until rice is coated with oil.  Put onto a higher heat and pour in the stock and stir rapidly until absorbed.  Add another dash of water and stir again until absorbed.  Repeat the process until the rices begins to swell.  Add the wine, rind and juice of the lemon, chopped fennel and the finely chopped sprigs of sage.  Continue to stir and add more water until the rice is almost cooked.  Add the peas and stir in, cooking the rice for the final five minutes until all melding together and quite soft.  Season with salt and pepper.

Take off the heat, add a few cubes of Gorgonzola and/or Parmesan and serve.  

The finished risotto

Heather honey, pine honey

I've been buying rather a lot of honey over the last few weeks.  It began with orange blossom honey (see Honey, Honey Ale and Milk and Honey, below), but my collection has recently expanded to include Bilsdale Heather honey from Long Newton Grange Farm, which I bought at Root's farm shop (see Food from the farm shop, below), and Greek Pine honey (bought today at the supermarket).

Long Newton Grange Farm - heather honey from Bilsdale

I tried the heather honey with butter on toast, it was strong and sweet and delicious - very good with a cup of Smoky Earl Gray tea (from Mariage Freres and brought back along with the Saveur du Soir when O and I went to Paris).

Honey and butter on toast

The Pine honey is darker, and richer - with the scent of thyme (from which it is probably mixed) and a resinous sweetness like liquorish and also pine.  It is just the sort of thing that would go with Greek yogurt or the jar of baby figs - I'll try and let you know.

Food found at the farm shop

On Saturday morning M and I stopped at Root's Farm shop and cafe in East Rounton, near the edge of the Yorkshire Moors.  We drank strong coffee and ate generous slices of carrot cake, and then wandered around the shop.  I came home with a bottle of Extra Virgin rapeseed oil called "Gold from the Wold" and some Monks Folly, and a jar of Bilsdale heather honey (see Heather Honey, Pine Honey, above).

Gold from the Wold rapeseed oil

The rapeseed oil is nuttier and lighter than olive oil.  I think it will be good for roasting vegetables like parsnips and carrots and a giving a different flavour to dressings.

The Monks Folly (possibly should be Monk's Folly or Monks' Folly?) is a cheese from another local cheese makers, Shepherd's Purse.  It was perhaps a little unripe when we ate it, but it tasted good, and made a nice lunch with salad, tomato, bread and a little of the rapeseed oil.

Lunch from the farm shop

Roast fennel, lemon and Gorgonzola

A draft as I need to find the name of the cookery book - and some photos.

This is my version, which we ate at O's flat with T, alongside a slow roasted tomatoes and a watercress, pear and lime salad.  The salad was better than the tart (perhaps because the tart travelled across London on a hot tube and then sat in the fridge at work all day).  Pastry goes soggy, I forgot that.  Next time make on the day (or without the cream cheese).

Roast fennel tart with lemon and Gorgonzola

For the tart

A square of short crust pastry, about 20cm diameter.
20g of organic butter
Three small to medium sized fennel bulbs
Rind and juice of half a lemon
A tablespoon of honey (optional)
100g quark or cream cheese
Two roasted cloves of garlic (from the tomatoes, below)
150g of Gorgonzola
A teaspoon of fennel seeds

Wash and slice the fennel.  Chop off the very base and the green stalks at the top (but keep any of the wispy frond like leaves), and then cut into 4mm slices, try and keep the fennel together in each slice (so that it doesn't fall completely apart).  Put the butter in a griddle pan and melt.  Add the fennel and roast, initially on a high heat, but don't let the butter burn.  Add the rind and juice of the lemon and the fennel seeds.  Turn until the fennel is starting to go brown, then lower the heat and cover until it softens.  I also add a little honey to make it caramelise, but that's because I'm putting honey with everything at the moment.  When the fennel is golden brown and soft, take the dish off the heat.

Roll out the pastry (from the packet in my case) into a square onto the greased baking tray.  If the corners bend up the sides slightly, this doesn't matter.   I was busy and feeling lazy so bought the pastry from the supermarket, but it is worth making it if you have the time.  Jamie Oliver has a recipe online for sweet short-crust pastry that looks good.  Bake the pastry blind for 10 minutes.

Take out of the oven and allow to cool.  Meanwhile, take the skins off two of the roast garlic cloves and mash with the cream cheese and a little salt and pepper.  Spread over the pastry, leaving a couple of millimeters to the edge.

Set out the roasted fennel on top of the cream cheese, trying to keep the slices of fennel together where possible.  Sprinkle small (1cm) cubes of Gorgonzola over the mixture, and also any little green tufts of fennel from the top of the bulbs.  The dish can be set aside at this stage if you wish.  Put back in the oven with the grill on until the cheese melts and begins to bubble a golden brown.

For the slow roast tomatoes

This is adapted from the Nigel Slater recipe I made the other day with goats cheese.

Six good quality, dark red, medium sized tomatoes, sliced in half
A third of a bulb of garlic, broken into cloves
Olive oil (just standard stuff - I used the oil from my jar of sun dried tomatoes)
Two sprigs of thyme (I used frozen this time)
Extra virgin olive oil (about 2-3 tablespoons)
Maldon salt and pepper to taste

Slice the tomatoes in half, and place on a baking tray sliced side up, the garlic scattered between them. Drizzle over the olive oil and place in the oven (about 200 degrees) initially at the top, and then after about 20 minutes take out of the oven, remove the garlic cloves and return the tray to the bottom shelf.  Put the heat down a bit if they appear to be cooking too fast.

Take the cloves of garlic out of their skins and mash with a little olive oil.

The tomatoes are ready when they start to dehydrate and collapse slightly.  They should look overcooked, but not burnt or dried out.  Spread a little of the garlic mixture on each tomato, arrange on a plate, scatter with two sprigs of thyme and a generous amount of extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper.  Cool and serve.



For the watercress salad

A bunch of fresh watercress (I like organic, if you can get it)
A bag of lambs lettuce or pea-tops
Two soft conference pears
Rind and juice of a lime
Dash (half a teaspoon) of hazelnut or sesame oil (optional)
Four tablespoons of chopped, roasted hazelnuts
Extra virgin olive oil, Maldon salt and black pepper

Wash the watercress and lettuce and take the large stalks off the watercress.  Core the pears and peel if you want to, but I quite like the mottled green skins against the white flesh.  Chop into thin slices and place in a bowl with the rind and juice of the lime and the hazelnut/ sesame oil if you're using.

Conference pears (image courtesy of Glysiak wiki commons)

Dry roast the hazelnuts (e.g. fry without oil in a pan over a medium heat) until brown but not black.  Pour out of pan and set aside (if you leave them in the pan they'll continue to cook and then burn, I've done this before with pine-nuts).  Slice the hazelnuts in half once cool.

Add pear & mixture, hazelnuts, olive oil et al to the lettuce, toss together and serve immediately.

Sushi from the Evil Empire

The streets near where I work are lined with purveyors of lunchtime sushi:  Itsu, with their strange but wonderful Hip and Healthy salad; Wasabi with their technological seaweed onigini and green tea ice cream (see Guilty Pleasures); and the groovy Abokado with their schwaps and noddle soup.   I'd tried all these and they're each as good as the other in their way. 

Only today, in search of some fresh mint to make tea, I thought I'd economise and try The Evil Empire supermarket.  The sushi was indeed cheap (£2) but not, unfortunately, good value.  It was so bad that a shoplifter would have felt ripped-off.  No one seemed to have explained that sushi rice is not made by waiting till rice goes cold and sticks together, nor that sushi needs wasabi and pickled ginger along with a little plastic fish of watery soy.  Perhaps most confusing of all though was the fact that the filling chosen for one of the pieces of sushi was coleslaw.   Coleslaw I tell you.  Never again. 

Sushi, but not as we know it.

If you are in search of the real deal, Dean's blog has a step-by-step guide to making sushi.

Milk and Honey

On the theme of honey, it is also great to cook with; more interesting in sweet dishes than sugar and corn syrup, and also good with some savoury food as well.

O and I recently visited the lovely Spanish tapas restaurant, Casa Brindisa, which serves deep fried Monte Enebro goats' cheese with orange blossom honey.  It's delicious and I'm going to try and make this myself some time.  Spanish chef Jose Pizarro  (of Brindisa) has a recipe for this in the Daily Telegraph.  If it works, I'll include my version.

Monte Enebro (also known as Juniper Hill) is available in the UK from the delicatessen Melbury and Appleton.  This is how our's looked in the restaurant (with beetroot chips and lashings of honey - fab).

Milk and Honey, also deserves a mention; the Soho speak-easy bar.  O and I went there recently and drank delicious gin and lime cocktails, listening to the jazz cocooned in the high leather booths and almost darkness. 

Honey and honey ale

Honey is the best.  It's great to cook with, comes in all kinds of subtle flavours and buying local honey is  good for bees.

Monofloral honey is the name for those types of honey which are (predominately) made from the nectar harvested from one type of blossom.  Some of the interesting ones are as follows (I've drawn a lot of this information from the Wiki site, linked above).

Acacia is lemon yellow to almost colourless, aromatic and light tasting. Acacia honey is actually from a false acacia, Robinia pseudoacacia, commonly known as black locust, a tree native to eastern North America and widely planted in Europe.  Another very light honey is lime (linden) blossom (Tilia americana) which is water-white or pale, although its coloring depends on the time of collection. 

Although genuine monofloral clover is rare (most light, mild-flavored honeys are mixed and called clover for the retail trade) the real deal is white to pale and has a waxy aftertaste.  In Yorkshire heather honey is produced by taking the bees up onto the moors in the summer months to gather the nectar from the banks of purple heather.  It is a white, aromatic honey a little like clover.  Other honeys produced in the UK are apple blossom, cherry blossom and hawthorn.

Lavender is a lovely woody and floral honey, light yellow in colour and produced mainly in France and Spain (as is Rosemary).  I've seen Lavender honey on sale in Casa Brindisa.  Another herb honey is Sage (Salvia), (which never crystallizes) and wild thyme which is produced in Greece (thyme grows very well on baked, dry ground).  Pine honey is also produced in Greece and in Turkey.

See Heather Honey, Pine Honey, above. 

There are also some darker honeys: avocado gives a dark amber honey and chestnut is also a dark, yellowish brown and has one of the highest mineral contents of all honeys.  The mesquite tree (from the Sourthwest US) is also prized for its sweet-smoky smelling wood, primarily used in barbecues and meat smokers. The honey produced from its flowers also has this distinctive smoky aroma and is dark brown and viscous, remaining semi-crystalline even in hot weather.

However, the one on my shelf at the moment is Orange blossom honey.  This is produed in various countries including France, Mexico and Spain and is actually made from mixed citrus nectar not just orange. It is a thick, very sweet honey with a strong aroma.  It varies in colour from light amber to white.  The lighter color and milder flavor comes from years when there is a large harvest and the honey is little contaminated by other nectars.  is my current favourite.



Parisian lavender

Honey can also be made into ale, of which there are two I know.  The first is Fuller's Organic Honey Dew, which is a light summery ale, good for a picnic or a barbeque.

Fuller's Honey Dew ale

The second is Wells & Young's honey beer Waggle Dance.  I discovered this almost ten years ago while learning to coppice (the ancient art of managing hazlewoods which I decided to learn for reasons that now escape me).  It was rather hard work and also wet and damp, but the evenings were much cheered by a bottle of honey ale.  

 

The name waggle dance, incidentally, comes from the figure of eight dance bees perform in order to share information as to where they have found honey.

Quark, rye bread and blackberries for breakfast

I've never found fresh mulberries on sale, but after gathering them ripe on the tree last week (see Around the Mulberry trees, below) I went in search of Mulberry Jam at the supermarket.  Tiptree do a Mulberry (and a Loganberry) jam, but there was none on sale, so I settled for blackberries on rye bread with quark for a weekend breakfast.

Coriander seed rye bread with quark and blackberries

This is a really simple recipe that works with both cream cheese and quark.  The rye bread I found was studded with aromatic coriander seeds. Serves one.

Two slices of rye bread, toasted.
Quark or cream cheese
Blackberries
Orange honey blossom honey
Toast the rye bread until soft and beginning to crisp, but not too hard.
Slightly crush the blackberries with a fork.

Blackberries, just in season

Spread the rye toast with the cream cheese and add the blackberries.  Add honey to taste.

Quark (the soft cheese) comes from the Middle High German quarc, from Lower Sorbian twarog, from Old Church Slavonic tvarog according to the Free Online Dictionary. 

The other type of quark (the elementary particles with electric charges of a magnitude one-third or two-thirds that of the electron) however, reputedly get their name from a passage in Jame's Joyce's Finnegans Wake, which inspried Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel Prize winning physicist:

"Three quarks for Muster Mark!/Sure he hasn't got much of a bark/And sure any he has it's all beside the mark."

Baby figs with quark

I was looking for mulberry jam in the supermarket, which I could not find, but instead came across a jar of baby figs in syrup, so bought this instead and made the following recipe mid way through the afternoon on Saturday, which is one of the pleasures of a weekend.

Baby figs and quark

Quark is a German fat-free soft cheese, which is good in both sweet and savoury dishes and very cheap. This serves one person. 

1/2 tub quark
3 or 4 baby figs
2 tablespoons of syrup from the jar
a little orange blossom honey to taste (optional)
a sprinkling (a teaspoon) of roasted almond slices (optional)

Spoon out half a tub of quark onto a dish.  Place the figs on the top and pour over the syrup and honey, the sprinkle with the almonds.

For a slightly richer version of the same, use mascarpone cheese mixed with a little vanilla and icing sugar (a very good and lazy pudding to serve with coffee at the end of a meal).

UFO peaches

These beautiful, delicious white skinned peaches are in all the Halal grocers near where we live at the moment, along with boxes of Alphonso mangoes.  There real name is, apparently, the Chinese peach or Paraguaya.

The peaches are very nice eaten straight from the bowl, or chopped up in a fruit salad (I tried with blackberries and honey).

A picnic in the garden

We finished off the left-overs in picnic last night: roasted courgettes with thyme and olive oil and a green salad with broad-beans, avocado and Jervaulx blue cheese, along with some nice red wine C had won on a raffle. 

Warm roasted courgettes with thyme and olive oil

An Italian friend once told me that courgettes should always been roasted dry without oil until they blacken, with the olive oil added afterwards.  He was right, it stops the courgettes getting soggy and saturated with oil and keeps their fresh green taste better. (This serves 2 as part of a picnic).

two courgettes, cut into long strips, about 3mm thick
olive oil
salt and pepper
thyme leaves

Cut the courgettes length-ways into strips about 3mm thick.  Don't peel, they look lovely with the dark green skin.

Chopped courgettes of approximate thickness

Place in a griddle pan if you have one, or a frying pan without any oil on a high heat.  Place the courgettes in the pan and fry until they begin to blacken on both side (they will need turning).  Remove from the heat and place on a plate or bowl.  Pour over about 4 tablespoons of olive oil, and sprinkle over salt, pepper and thyme leaves to taste. 

This can be served warm as we ate it, or allowed to cool overnight or for a couple of days, in which case the favours marinate and the oil goes a lovely green.

Roast courgettes with olive oil and thyme.

This is also the kind of recipe that would work well on a barbecue.

Summer Salad with Jervaulx Abbey Blue Cheese

Although this was a salad of left-overs from the week, the nice cheese brightened it up.  

Jervaulx Abbey is a picturesque abbey, hidden in a seculded valley in the Yorkshire Dales.  It was founded in the 12th Centural and destroyed four hundred years later during the dissolution of the monasteries.  Now only a ruin remains.  The cheese named after it - Jervaulx - has just been brought on the market by the local cheese makers, the Wensleydale Creamery, and very nice it is to.

2 little gem lettuces
half a pack of broad-beans, prepared as described in the post about Nigel Slater's recipes with thyme below
half a ripe avocado, cut into cubes
about the same amount of Jervaulx cheese (although having eaten most of it while waiting for my pasta to cook the other evening, so had rather less)
olive oil, juice of quarter of a lemon and salt & pepper to taste.

Wash and tear up the lettuces and put in the salad bowl.  Add the broad-beans, avocado and cheese and dress with oil, lemon and seasoning.  Stir and serve.

The Jervaulx Blue Cheese salad

The end of the picnic.

Apples, cream and vanilla makes ...

Have you ever found yourself looking in the fridge at three random ingredients and wondering 'What am I going to cook with this?'  Well the great French cookery site, Marmiton solves your problem.

Simply type in up to three ingredients and it will find a suitable recipe out of the reputed 50,000 on the site.  (One proviso, it's in French I'm afraid).

Anyway, as an experiment I just tired "apples, cream, vanilla" and 156 recipes came up, and I've included here the Tarte aux pommes à l'Alsacienne (serves 6)

A rather beautiful image from the french food blog, Les Guormandises de Sylvie

3 of 4 apples (depending on size)
pâte brisée (a type of short crust pastry, the food blog Chocolate & Zucchini have a recipe)
2 eggs
25 cl of crème fraîche
100 g icing sugar
a sachet of sucre vanillé (vanilla extract, although I would use half a vanilla pod)

Line a large greased circular baking tray with the pastry and press down with a fork.  Peel and cut the apples into fine slices. Place in the pastry case.

Mix the sugar crème fraîche, eggs, vanliles oeufs, le sucre vanillé; pour over the apple into the pastry case.

Put in an over at 200°C (th 6-7) until the tart has a golden colour.

Roast peppers and other vegetables

Dorrie Greenspan (who has a fabulous food blog, I've only recently discovered) has a very simple recipe today for roasted peppers.  I did a big shop yesterday, so it's too late to buy peppers when there's so much else to use, but I think I'll try roasting and marinating strips of courgette, and then maybe use the rest of the broad-beans and some blue cheese, maybe even some mint if we have any left in the flat.

Freezing herbs and lemons

Lemons and herbs keep well in the freezer. 

With herbs, just put them straight in a plastic bag without chopping. 

C's new herb garden

With lemons, chop them into quarters or eighths, put them in a plastic bag and freeze.

To use the herbs, there is no need to defreeze, just take them straight out of the freezer and crumble into whatever you are cooking. 

The lemons need about 10 mins defrosting when you take them out, then you can use them as normal. 

Straight from the freezer, they also work well in a gin and tonic instead of ice.

Nigel Slater's recipes with Thyme

Nigel Slater has a wonderful piece about cooking with thyme in the Guardian at the moment: Roast tomato, thyme & goats cheese, and Thyme & Lemon cake.

Thyme Thymus Vulgarius (Common Thyme) grows in our garden on the worst ground, dry sun-baked patches, and occasionally wound around the sage.  It's a great herb to put with vegetables and gives sweet recipes an aromatic quality.   I have one thyme plant in London, currently being rehabilitated from the supermarket shelf into a proper plant. 

Thyme in the garden

Last night I tried a version of the first recipe, which I made with a salad as follows:

Nigel Slater's roast tomatoes, thyme and goat's cheese with herb salad (as I made it)

The tomatoes:

six medium vine tomatoes (the kind with the slightly rough surface that have the sweet smell of greenhouses still about them)
half a dozen sprigs of lemon thyme (if you buy a bagful, freeze the rest)
half a bulb of garlic cloves (in their skins)
a little olive oil

The cheese:

another handful of young thyme leaves (from the top of the sprig, if you've brought a packet)
a roll of goat's cheese (little individual goats' cheeses would be better, but were were economising)

The salad:

a bag of organic, washed leaves (I'm in London, no lovely fresh lettuces)
a dozen leaves of both basil and thyme
half a bag of fresh broad-beans
half the juice of a lemon
a dash of olive oil
salt and pepper

Wash and half the tomatoes and put (cut side up) onto a baking tray with the garlic cloves (in their skins) mixed in between.  Season and pour over olive oil .  Put in the oven to roast (about 180 degrees).

Now make the salad.  Put a pan of water to boil and rub the lemon half and a clove of garlic around the salad bowl.  Shell the broad-beans into the boiling water and leave for five minutes.  Then drain, run over with cold water and shell.  Put half aside for another day.

Then shake in the leaves and mix with the herbs and broad-beans.  Squeeze in the lemon, olive oil and seasoning.  Mix and set aside for later.

The finished salad

Have a cup of tea or do the washing up, then after about twenty minutes take out the roasting dish.  Pick out the garlic cloves, peel off the skins and put the soft cloves into a bowl.  Put the tomatoes back in the oven to continue to roast.  To the mixture of garlic add the thyme leaves, a little Maldon and pepper (I finally bought some) and the mix together.  When the tomatoes have started to caramelise slightly (after another 15 minutes or so) take them out of the oven and spread a little bit of the mixture onto the tops of the tomatoes.

Slice the roll of goats cheese into 1/2cm thick slices.

The goats cheese

Put one slice of cheese on each tomato half and a bit more thyme on the top.

The tomatoes ready to go back in the oven

Return to the oven (I put the grill on at this stage).  Heat until the cheese begins to go golden.

The finished product

We ate it with the salad and rosemary focaccia bread.  They were nice (but better the following evening when we had the remainder cold without the cheese for a picnic).

And the washing up ...