Hi guys, I hope you're all really, really well. So I'm going to show you a beautiful side dish now.
It's a fantastic slow roasted tomato salad with orzo pasta. It's really fresh, it's really light.
This is from my new cookbook, Together. And Together is about togetherness, something that
we've all learned about or not about in the last year since lockdown. So this is all about meals to
make new memories. Each chapter is a whole feast, a whole meal and this dish here... here's the orzo
pasta there. This is a fantastic side dish from a chapter that I absolutely love called elegant
simplicity. You can cook this as a menu or you can take individual recipes as they are because
they're really nice recipes. Now the great thing about the recipes is I've written them in a new
style, right. And this style is... I write them in a way so you can get ahead of the game so when
your guests arrive you're not stressing. So, let's do this beautiful salad. Get yourself the ripest
tomatoes you can get your hands on. Get yourself the ripest tomatoes you can get your hands on, try
and get them on the vine. So in with the vines and the tomatoes. So this is one kilo of tomatoes
here. In here, the things that are going to make it delicious are some seasoning. Salt and pepper,
like that. There's a secret ingredient, some beautiful harissa and I'm gonna put a nice
teaspoon of this in here now. It's not hot, hot. It's very, very gentle. We're gonna go in with
a nice little kiss of extra virgin olive oil. A little splash of red wine vinegar and we're gonna
use two more things. Garlic, so just keep the skins on and just put a bulb in like that. In
we go. And then last but not least I've got some lovely spring onions. Just trim off both ends,
give them a wash and these go in like that. Mix it all up and this is like the perfect seasoning.
Leave the vine on, right. First tip here; the vine will give you that kind of fragrance of
the smell of tomatoes in the greenhouse. So with these tomatoes they're going to go in the
oven for one hour. We're going to slow roast them to really concentrate the flavours. So
that'll go in the oven at 150º celsius which is 300º fahrenheit. All I've got to do now
is cook some pasta now. This is orzo. Let's have a little look at this. Orzo is a shape of pasta
There's 500 gm there and I'm simply going to put that into some boiling salted water now.
The packet says cook these for 12 minutes so I'm going to cook it for 10 minutes, ok. I want it
slightly al dente. Now when that's five minutes in what I'm going to do is get some frozen broad
beans. Then I'll refresh them both in a colander under cold water and I'll show you what to do next
So the pasta has been beautifully cooked. I've run it under cold water so it's not cooking anymore
and that'll hold beautifully. With the broad beans look at the colour, it's such a beautiful bean
And then if you want to, only if you want to, just pinch the skin and squeeze the bean out like that.
Do I like eating them like that... absolutely. They're delicious. But if you can be bothered
and if you want to, you can peel them. That bit's done. We've had an hour in the oven here
The room smells absolutely amazing and look what you get after an hour
It really is something very special. You can see how the tomatoes have just sort of confeed
almost in themselves. So all I'm gonna do now is shake off these little vines like that. We'll
take out the spring onions and just put them on a board and we'll also take out the garlic
So just shake these tomatoes off the stalk like that. I want to push this through a coarse sieve,
reason being is I want to lose the tomato skins, right. Your trusty sieve is very helpful and we
just simply put the tomatoes in there. Everything goes in and I'll use the spoon just to squash the
tomatoes. The juice will flood out. We'll just keep pressing it until it's literally just pips
and skin on this side of the coarse sieve. It's going to be phenomenal. Now back over here,
we've got two things we want to think about. The garlic here, just squeeze it out the skins
Fork it up. Then I'm just going to use a knife to slice up the spring onions and then let's get that
into the sauce. So stir in those beautiful roasted spring onions
and the lovely creamy garlic. Then I'll go back in with the gorgeous broad beans and the orzo
and then I'll turn the heat up. Mix it up when it's cooled down a little bit. Just add some
beautiful fresh herbs. Things like mint, things like basil, dill, fennel and what I like to do
is put most of the herbs in there for flavour and then save back some for sprinkling on top later
So get those lovely fresh herbs in there. Really mix it up beautifully... I love it. The smell
is amazing, it really is. A bit of seasoning needed. I'm gonna give it a little kiss of nice
cold pressed extra virgin olive oil. Serve on a platter in bowls, whatever you like
Look at the colours. I'll take some of those herbs and just sprinkle them over the top
A little optional extra here because this is just going to be a salad today. A tiny
bit of feta cheese. There you go, my slow roasted tomato and orzo salad. Let's have a try. It is so
fragrant. So there you go guys, my orzo and tomato salad. I hope you love it as much as I do. Enjoy