Fresh flavours of the sea meet burstingly sweet, sun drenched tomatoes, with a hint of spice from the chorizo and chilli. This recipe is a quick but elegant lunchtime dish. All served up on toasted sourdough bread with a sprinkling of aromatic parsley. Squid, Chorizo and Cherry Tomatoes on toast. What is not to love.
The sea and the land… on toast!
There’s something deeply satisfying about a dish that involve smoky chorizo, tender squid, and blistered cherry tomatoes piled onto thick-cut sourdough. This is one of those recipes that feels both rustic and refined – like you’ve stumbled into a sun-drenched Mediterranean taverna – and you’d be proud to serve up on a lazy weekend lunchtime with a crisp glass of white.
Fresh flavours of the sea meet burstingly sweet, sun-drenched tomatoes, with a hint of chilli in this quick but elegant lunchtime dish.
Squid
Squid is a versatile seafood, readily available in most countries either fresh or frozen. Whether you’re looking to grill it, fry it, braise it, or stuff it, there are a multitude of ways to create dishes with a tender texture and bold flavours.
Favourites in restaurants and kitchens around the world you can find calamari/salt and pepper squid, chargrilled simply with garlic, lemon and oil or as in this dish paired with a spicy tomato sauce, braised in a seafood stew, to stuffed full of Mediterranean flavours and grilled or barbequed whole. And to those who are lucky enough to have access to the freshest possible squid there, is the delicacy of ceviche or sashimi.
Just be sure when cooking squid that it’s either slow and low or fast and high – otherwise you’ll be serving up a plate of chewy rubber. And no one wants that!
Cherry tomatoes
Cherry tomatoes are the pop stars of the tomato world. Small, vibrant and literally bursting with flavour.
Whereas larger tomatoes can support more robust sauces and cooking methods, cherry tomatoes are used primarily for quick, thrown together dishes, that require short cooking times. Think tomato risotto, pasta sauce, salads, bruschetta, or thrown into a tray bake for the final few minutes.
Other tomato recipes
Tomatoes have to be one of the most versatile things to come out of my garden and come in an array of different colours, shapes and sizes. Their uses are endless, from throwing them in a simple salad, to roasting them, blitzing in a soup, slicing in a sandwich, making tomato sauce for pasta or pizza, or preserving them in the form of tomato ketchup or chutney…
Here are just a few ideas for tomato recipes:
Growing tomatoes
One thing that brings a glimmer of sunshine into the cold, dark month of January in UK, is the beginning of the tomato’s new year. Planted indoors in the warm at the end of January, it’s a long but rewarding journey. From their tiny seeds to the first seedlings, and then nurturing them outdoors in the greenhouse (or continuing indoors) until the temperatures in May are warm enough. Now the real labour of love begins! With frequent watering, pruning, and feeding with nutrients such as coffee grinds and crush eggshells, until you reach harvest time. In late July through to September when you are rewarded with the long-awaited taste of freshly picked tomatoes. None of that watery, supermarket, nonsense that looks like a tomato but tastes very far from it with flesh as hard as bullets.
Is all that effort worth it? Abso-bloody-lutely 😊
Varieties of tomatoes
There are so many different varieties of tomatoes. Some of my favourites providing a good yield to use in the kitchen for salads or cooking are:
- Cherry Tomato – Sungold, Gardener’s Delight, Tumbling Tom
- Other Tomato Varieties:
- Plum Tomato – Nagina, Roma
- General Tomato – Crimson Crush, Moneymaker, Alicante
- Large Tomato – Marmande and Supersteak
We cannot resist a bottle of nicely chilled Picpoul wine with this recipe. Therefore it’s become a firm favourite lunchtime treat on a sunny Saturday!
Squid, Chorizo and Tomatoes on Toast
Ingredients
- 150 g cooking chorizo
- 1 tsp olive oil
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1 pinch of dried chilli flakes
- 300 g prepared squid
- 300 g cherry tomatoes
- 2 slices sourdough bread
- 1 tbsp finely chopped fresh parsley
- Salt and pepper
Instructions
- Dice the cooking chorizo and place in a medium frying pan over a medium to high heat, moving constantly until starting to crisp. Remove to a piece of kitchen paper, leaving the oil in the pan.
- Crush the garlic and place into the chorizo oil in the pan along with the chilli flakes – how much spice is up to you! Turn the heat to medium and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes.
- Slice the squid into rings approximately 50mm thick, and together with the cherry tomatoes add to the pan. Stir regularly until the squid loses its transparency and the cherry tomatoes are mostly burst open. Season to taste.
- In the meantime, toast 2 thick slices of sourdough and put on your plates.
- Return the chorizo back to the pan, give everything a good stir for a minute, and then spoon over the toast, adding a sprinkling of chopped parsley on the top.
