Last tomatoes I roast on the tray — I don’t bin them as “no longer salad”

End of the season — and on the board there are still tomatoes “no longer for salad”. Easy to bin them: a soft side, wrinkled skin, the hand reaches for a tin. I cut them large, a spoon of oil, salt, into the oven — so they turn sweet on bread or with meat, not rubbish by the sink.

Last tomatoes I roast on the tray — I don’t bin them as “no longer salad”. Tomatoes on the windowsill are another note; a tin of tomatoes honestly its own; paste in a jar another story. Here it’s the last fresh ones themselves: on the tray, soft in the heat — not a lecture about “the perfect September salad”.

In the oven until soft with a light edge of colour. Cooled I keep them in the cold a day or two; a portion I’ve already reheated I don’t put back “for tomorrow again”. If there is mould or a sour smell — into the bin, not “one more sauce”. I’m not writing a new bruschetta review in this note — it’s about the tomatoes that already lay on our board.

I don’t need a heap I’m ashamed to cut into a salad and ashamed to throw away. I need a tray from which the last tomatoes smell of home. At yours do soft tomatoes reach the oven — or already the bin as “no longer salad”?