Tomato, Cottage Cheese & Jalapeño Toast - Food for Freshers

We recently discovered this winning combination of creamy cottage cheese, tangy roasted tomatoes and crispy toast. It’s addictively good. The first time Estella tried one she said she’d be happy to eat them for breakfast, lunch & dinner! We also top our toasts with smoky jalapeños for another kick of flavour & colour. Lovely! You really must give them a try.

You ideally need to make a batch of our Roast Tomatoes to make them, find out how to do this in our Tip here. But we’re sure you could make them with some flavoured-up tinned tomatoes too. Drain the tinned tomatoes slightly so there is not too much juice. Then warm them in a saucepan with a little garlic paste & some chopped fresh herbs or a dried mix, and season well. They won’t be as good as home Roast Tomatoes, but your toasts will still be very tasty.

You’ll also need some cottage cheese. We use a full fat one for this dish, but a reduced fat or 0% one would work too, especially if you want to make the toasts even healthier. We top with smoked jalapeños, kindly gifted to us by our friends at Peppadew. The slight smokiness & gentle heat work really well with the tomatoes. But any pickled chillies would work. And then you just need to make some toast. We use a white sandwich loaf as it gives a good shape & crisps well, but use your favourite bread. We’re not great fans of sourdough for this particular dish however. We love sourdough, but we think the toast it makes is a bit too firm to suit here.

First make a batch of Roast Tomatoes. Find out how in our Tip here. We roast the tomatoes in the oven with garlic, thyme, rosemary, chilli flakes & olive oil at 180C (160C fan) for about an hour.

The tomatoes are nicest on the toast just warm, rather than hot from the oven. So allow them to cool a little before making the toasts. You could also use them at room temperature (so if you’ve stored some in your fridge get them out about half an hour before you wish to serve).

Now make some toast. We like it quite thick, well-browned & crispy for this dish.

The jalapeños we used today were quite unusual – in smoked brine. The smokiness works really well with the tang of the tomato and the creamy cheese. Thanks to Peppadew for introducing us to them. But you could also use regular pickled jalapeños. Ours today were pre-sliced but if yours are whole or in halves, slice them. Have your other ingredients ready to top the toast.