114: Bread and tomato salad, p273

A simple salad jazzed up with the addition of anchovy fillets, olives and red wine vinegar. Not sure if the bread was supposed to be chopped up after baking, as it definitely didn't say in the recipe... I cut the oblong ciabatta into thick rounds so they were c. 2x3inches, mixed them with the salad and dressing, and then placed the bread in the bowls and piled the salad and poured the dressing on top, but I think it might have been better to chop the bread up into more bite-sized crouton pieces so they would soak up more of the juices and be easier to eat (who wants to be trying to cut pieces of crispy bread in a salad?? We used our fingers to eat the bread in the end...). If I did this again I'd also chop the anchovies up and mix them in the dressing and then dress the salad with them, to make the fishy meatiness of the anchovies go that bit further, throughout the whole salad.

84: Roast tomato soup with basil and olive oil toasts, p251

A supreme recipe! This has to be one of the best - and it's SOOOOOOOOO EASY, you wouldn't believe. Definitely a keeper. And I don't like tomato soup! I don't! Can't stand the bought stuff, don't much like it in restaurants, but this was something else. Mmmmm. And it's a cold, chilled soup. And it's still super tasty, full of flavour, and filling, doesn't have much in common with a light, gazpacho-style palate cleanser.... It's such an easy thing to do, but I'd never have thought of adding the stock to the roasting dish and boiling it up on the hob like when making gravy (added bonus of cleaning the dish at the same time, and not losing all those tasty bits...). Tasty tasty tasty.