Frankie Dunn’s Panzanella

I learned two things on the show this week. One, I have been storing tomatoes wrong for my entire adult life. Two, a bowl of bread and tomatoes can stop me talking mid-sentence, which regular listeners will tell you takes some doing.

Frankie Dunn was back in the studio. You’ll know her from this year’s MasterChef, where she made it through to the final six before going out at the semi-final stage — not bad for someone from Lymm who applied on a bit of a whim. She’s promised us a recipe a month now, built around one ingredient. She started with tomatoes. And she brought lunch.

The tomato rule I’d been breaking

The fridge. That’s where mine live. Frankie’s face when I admitted that told me everything.

“It makes them taste completely different,” she said. “Keep them outside.”

She’s right, and there’s proper science behind it — cold temperatures shut down the compounds that give a tomato its smell and flavour, and once that’s gone you don’t get it back by warming them up again.

Frankie has three or four big vines sat on her kitchen side at the moment. In her house they don’t last long enough to worry about.

She also mentioned something I’d never thought about. Raw tomatoes give you more vitamin C. Cooked ones give you more lycopene — and you absorb more of that again if there’s a bit of olive oil involved. So there’s no wrong answer. Just eat them.

Her other tomato fact, which she’d written down and then forgot to use until I dragged it out of her: in 1893 the US Supreme Court ruled tomatoes were vegetables. Botanically they’re a fruit. But the case was about import duties, and the court decided that if you serve it with dinner rather than pudding, it’s a vegetable. Money talks.

Frankie’s panzanella (about 15 minutes)

Panzanella is an Italian bread and tomato salad, and the whole point of it is using up bread that’s past its best. Frankie made this one on the morning of the show. I told her she could have made a bit more of an effort, and she offered me a 20-hour slow-cooked lamb next time, so watch this space.

You’ll need: day-old bread (sourdough is ideal, seeded or wholemeal works too), good tomatoes, olive oil, a couple of garlic cloves, anchovies, capers, a lemon, fresh basil, a little mint, salt.

Method

1. Tear the bread into chunks and toast in the oven for a few minutes until crisped up.
2. Warm some olive oil in a pan with the garlic, the anchovies and a pinch of salt. Gently — you don’t want the garlic browning.
3. Mash it all together into a rough paste, then toss the toasted bread through it so every crouton is coated.
4. Slice your tomatoes. Add them to the bread with lemon juice, lemon zest, a scattering of capers, torn basil and a bit of mint.
5. Toss, drizzle with olive oil, finish with a pinch of salt and more basil over the top.

Frankie sometimes adds roasted aubergine and pepper and a few pine nuts, which nudges it towards a caponata. She’d have done that this time but didn’t have them in the house.

Two things I’d add. Capers usually do nothing for me, but in this they’re not overpowering at all — just little punches of salt against sweet tomato. And it looks like a nibble, but it isn’t. Once you start you cannot stop. Frankie eats it as a main course, and it’ll feed a crowd on a big sharing platter if you’ve been told to bring a dish to a barbecue.

Seven courses in Knutsford — Friday 18 September

Here’s the bit you’ll want to move on. Frankie is running a seven-course Spanish tasting menu at April’s Kitchen on Regent Street, Knutsford, on Friday 18 September, with a local wine merchant coming in to handle the pairings.

Every one of her menus starts with bread, because as she puts it, bread and butter is the best thing ever. So: homemade bread with anchovy butter, caramelised onion tortilla with black garlic aioli, mussel escabeche, a deconstructed rabbit paella, a cold tomato soup — salmorejo, thicker and creamier than a gazpacho — a cheese course with manchego, and a dark chocolate Basque cheesecake finished with extra virgin olive oil and candied chillies.

Come with friends, book an intimate table for two, or come on your own — she’s running sharing tables. Tickets are through the link in her Instagram bio at @feastingwithfrankie, and there are more dates booked in Knutsford and Lymm with details to follow.

Frankie’s back with us next month, and another ingredient. I’ll have taken my tomatoes out of the fridge by then.