Cheap and Cheerful Tomato Crumble

At the end of our holiday in Brittany we spent a few days in Laval with Seb’s good friends, Thomas and Laeticia. We’ve stayed with them a few times now and I love their home. Laeticia has a colourful Lavallois family history; she comes from a family of seed growers from the town and inherited the family home via a priest uncle who passed on the modest payment for the property to his congregation.

It’s a sprawling house above an opticians near the city centre, with a walled kitchen garden and rickety old shed out back. Having studied catering and worked in restaurants, both changed careers in their late-twenties to become carers – she for young people with learning disabilities, he for psychiatric patients at the hospital – so they weren’t rolling in cash when they took on the old building, but I love what they’ve done with it, scrubbing back the wooden floors and giving the whole place a good lick of primary coloured paint.

Not only did they inherit the house, but also the vintage family furniture. I pine for the Formica table relegated to the laundry room and original features like the mid-century taps in the spare room. Plus they have all the memorabilia from the seed-growing years. Their breakfast bar is plastered with old seed packets, which made a handy learning/distraction tool for a hungry toddler learning his vegetables.

In typically French fashion, I’m reminded every time I visit Laval that life is food, and life is love. And food with love is the icing on the cake. Which is great for us because we eat well every time we go there. Thomas was vegetarian for many years, so the pair have an impressive repertoire of cheap but delicious vegetarian food, including the cherry tomato crumble we were treated to on this particular trip.

The tomatoes, of course, came from the garden, carefully collected by Sidney and ourselves, then tipped  unceremoniously over the mud before being painstakingly returned to the basket, one tomato at a time. With all the French sunshine they must have had throughout the summer they were sweet to the point where it could have felt like we were eating a dessert if it weren’t for the balsamic vinegar and cheesy crumble.

It’s such a cheap and tasty dish, I decided to make it again at home. I used plum tomatoes because I couldn’t resist them at the market, but they also made a slightly more savoury pudding, which I liked. I also added fresh thyme from the garden – again, to temper the sweetness of the tomatoes – and swapped white flour for wholemeal.

Here’s my recipe:

Cheap and Cheerful Tomato Crumble

Serves 4

1kg ripe tomatoes, chopped into big chunks (halved if cherry)

500g shallots, peeled and quartered

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

a few sprigs of thyme, leaves separated

150g wholemeal flour

100g butter, cubed

75g Parmesan, grated

75g goats’ cheese, sliced

extra-virgin olive oil

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 150°C/gas 2.

Scatter the chopped tomatoes and shallots over the base of a casserole or baking dish and toss with the balsamic vinegar and half the thyme leaves. Season to taste (I just add pepper and let the Parmesan in the crumble provide the saltiness) and bake for 1 hour. Take the dish out of the oven and turn up the heat to 220°C/gas 7.

Rub together the flour, butter and half the grated Parmesan with your fingers until you have a breadcrumb consistency. Scatter over the cooked tomatoes and onions and lay the slices of goats’ cheese over the top. Scatter over the remaining thyme leaves and Parmesan. Bake for a further 30 minutes, until the top is crispy and golden brown.

Serve with something neutral like fresh salad leaves and green peas to balance the richness of the crumble.