Chef Phil Howard shares his love of fresh, ripe tomatoes and reveals three of his favourite recipes that hero this ingredient
Seasonality is a word that we read and hear about often these days, but I’m still not sure that many people either eat or cook by it. In my opinion, it is everything: the seasons deliver us an ever-changing repertoire of ingredients to enjoy when they’re at their most prolific and their most healthy. Seasonal foods are also generally more reasonably priced than if they were shipped in from distant countries at other times of the year, and so you’re helping to avoid clocking up airmiles and their consequential carbon footprint. And that’s the boring bit! Seasonal eating also ensures that we are enjoying produce at its very best, in peak condition, perfectly ripe and alongside other ingredients that it pairs with so well.
The arrival of tomatoes in the summer marks one of the greatest changes in the feel of the food that I eat and cook. Out go the greens and verdancy of spring and in come the wonderful, sun-drenched flavours of summer. Out goes butter and in comes olive oil.
There is, perhaps, no other ingredient that demonstrates the seasonal variance in eating and nutritional quality as well as a tomato does. Grab a pack of rock-hard pink tomatoes from the supermarket in December and compare them to a firm, yet juicy, ruby red fragrant summer fruit… the two are completely incomparable.
A perfect tomato is a magnificent thing, calling for a few grains of salt and a drizzle of cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil. Oh, and perhaps a few shreds of basil. Any further treatment is entirely optional.
Uses for tomatoes are as abundant as there are varieties of this epic fruit. Seasonal ingredients are most delicious eaten alongside things that ripen simultaneously… in the same neck of the woods and therefore the same climate. Seasonality is somehow magical in its ability to deliver happy bedfellows in the pan. Tomatoes just do not work with parsnips, but the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts when they are thrown into a pan with basil, olives, aubergines, courgettes, garlic, onions, and the list goes on and on to anchovies, lamb and summer varieties of fish.
These recipes on the following pages put tomatoes to great and simple use. Enjoy.
Grilled Sea Bream with Roasted Cherry Toms and Balsamic Vinegar
Serves: 4
Prepare: 15 minutes
Cook: 25 minutes
4 fillets of sea bream
4 x 15cm long strings of la
