Lunch lady
Roast harissa tomatoes on herby yoghurt toast, disaster baking and a plea for recommendations
Just a note that I’ll be eating my way from Naples to Catania in the last two weeks of September, so there’ll be a couple of special pizza and pasta themed newsletters coming up. You’ll be getting my ultimate ragu recipe, and all the best pizza and pasta I’ve eaten in London. Also, if you’ve been to Naples/Catania/anywhere on the Amalfi coast, I’d love to know your recommendations, so feel free to send me beaches I shouldn’t miss, restaurants that I’ll roll out of, and bars where I can find a tacky cocktail or two.
Lunch is my least favourite meal of the day. It feels more rushed than breakfast, I never plan it properly, and by the time I get into the office what I’ve packed is never what I fancy. Being lucky enough to work from home a few days a week affords more freedom for satisfying midday cravings. The most recent obsession has been tomatoes on toast. Stuff on toast for lunch is not new. There’s humble baked beans, cheddar cheese melted under the grill with a swipe of pickle, soft scrambled eggs with marmite, I could go on.
Tomatoes on toast is also not new - apparently tinned toms on toast was a popular wartime breakfast. However, I like the addition of a little spicy, fragrant harissa, garlic-rubbed bread and a lemony yoghurt to cut through it all. This recipe probably only takes 5 minutes of hands on time, and just 15 minutes in the oven, so it’s great for busy days where you need some nourishment in the form of something not beige, but the comfort of carbohydrates.
You could make your own version of this - perhaps chipotle paste and coriander and lime yoghurt instead of harissa and mint, or torn fresh basil and pesto for an Italian feel. Basically, have a bit of what you fancy.
Roast harissa tomatoes on herby yoghurt toast
Serves 1
150g cherry tomatoes
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp harissa paste
2 tbsp natural yoghurt
5-10 mint leaves
a small handful of parsley
1/2 a lemon
1 thick slice of your favourite bread
1 clove of garlic
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Tip your cherry tomatoes into a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil, harissa pasta and a pinch of salt. Toss, then roast for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, mix together the yoghurt, lemon juice, herbs (leaving a few for garnishing) and a pinch of salt and pepper in a bowl. Put your toast in the toaster.
Cut open the garlic clove and rub all over the toast, then top with the yoghurt, spreading it to the edges. Then, take your tomatoes out of the oven and gently squash them with a fork so they burst open. Top your toast with the tomatoes, then sprinkle over some more fresh mint and parsley.
Boy have I got a bumper crop of unwise words for you this week. First, disaster cookies (or cakies as they are now fondly known), which turned out, as the name might suggest, more like flat cakes than chewy, gooey cookies. Note to self: pay attention to recipes, and don’t over-beat your butter and sugar. Second, another baking fail, sadly from one of my usually fail-safe cookbooks, some salted miso brownies. I’m not sure what to call what came out of the oven, but they were definitely not brownies. Wet but also dry, crumbly but also dense and turn to sugar in your mouth? Confusing. I’m going to blame the chia seeds (not my housemate, who crafted the offending dessert).
Things to eat/watch/read:
My housemate made a gorgeous aubergine katsu curry with pickled radishes for dinner last week from Meera Sodha’s East (which is also one of my favourite cookbooks) and I would totally recommend getting someone to cook this for you too.
Two great pieces sent to me by my mum made great reading this week: ‘I was so much happier outside London’: how top chefs found heaven in the West Country’ and ‘I’ve learned to appreciate tomato sandwiches, and to relish culinary beef’.
D’you know what? It’s time I let you all in on a secret. The best post-pub/club/bar/party chips are located just down the road from Clapham North station, at Sexy Fish and Shish (yes). They’re proper fat chip-shop chips and I don’t know what they put on them, but they taste like heaven. I have no pictures, because they’re so good I eat them straight away.