Quick Tomato Soup/ Berlin Skipping

 

On the way to breakfast at my friends I couldn't help but stop off at the skip. It's sort of an addiction. I was pretty late for breakfast, but from the above skip haul, I whipped a quick and easy tomato soup for lunch. I basically chopped up all the tomatoes and simmered them with some garlic, basil and oil. And the freshly baked rolls from the skip went perfectly. This is basically my favourite way to cook, when the skip decides what I'll be preparing.

- Dara

Toasted Walnut Bread with Basil

Wow, just wow. Maybe my favourite way to eat bread, and that’s really saying something. It’s a sort of bruschetta. With the nuts and the basil it’s reminiscent of pesto, so if you’re a pesto fan give this a go pronto!

Walnut bread is easy, easier if you have a bread maker: it is normal bread with crushed walnuts in it. This one had walnut oil too, but that’s just showing off.

So! Grill a a doorstop piece of bread – the difference in thickness will make for different textures as you get through the slice. If you’re a fan of loaves with straight edges then you could always even it up by slicing a doorstop in the opposite direction. It just means you have to eat two slices, but trust me, you will anyway.

When the toast is golden and crunchy on top rub a clove of garlic over it, then rub a few basil leaves on. Sprinkle over some olive oil, salt and pepper and there you have it – a mouth watering delight.

Apologies for the photo – the glare was intense and I couldn’t see what I was doing.

Tomato, Mozzarella and Strawberry Salad with Fresh Basil

Does what it says on the tin. Lovely.

Serving suggestion: eat with hot buttered toast.

Cashew Nut Pesto

This is an incredible discovery - a handful of roasted cashews, about the same of basil, a clove of garlic, and some salt and pepper. Most people would add parmesan as well but it really doesn't need it. Whizz it all up with a blender then pour in as much olive oil as you like. Just make sure it's the good stuff; I like co-op's own brand. Or, as they call it here, Scotmid.

Traditionally in Italy they eat a first course of meat or fish with some sort of veg or salad, then a second of pasta. It's basically a protein course with some greenery followed by a carbohydrate course. I remembered this as I ate handfuls of roasted cashews from the pan as I waited for the pasta to cook. If you want to be a bit more civilised than me, a nice salad with some roasted cashews sprinkled over it would be a good prelude to this pasta dish.

Another thing the Italians do is stop cooking their pasta when it resists a bite slightly, rather than letting it cook to a mulch like us we tend to do on these fair isles. My way of doing this is to take a bit of pasta out every minute or so when it's nearing the end of it's cooking time and biting it to check whether or not it has changed colour all the way through - if there's just the very tiniest bit uncooked in the middle then it's time to get the sieve out, stare at it for a few seconds, then drain it. Apparently Italians just throw it at the wall, but I've only ever seen British people do that, so it might just be a myth that we've made up, like the fact that they eat garlic bread. One of the most bizzare moments of my life was explaining garlic bread to a guy from near Naples who was doing a bit of a Peter Kay at me in Italian - "Garlic?! Bread?! Garlic on bread?!"

Watch this blog for some extreme garlic bread recipes - Dara is a garlic head with a penchant for baking bread.