Herbs, oil, and a basket of tomatoes – cooking with what’s on hand

Sometimes you don’t make a dish. Sometimes you just find it.

You’re walking through the garden, it’s warm, the sun already starting to dip. And suddenly you see it: that one basket of tomatoes is perfectly ripe. The basil is bursting. You’ve still got half a loaf of bread from yesterday, a bottle of good olive oil, and somewhere deep in a drawer, a clove of garlic. And there you are. No plan. Just cooking with what’s on hand.

Cooking without a shopping list

There are days when I deliberately avoid the supermarket. No forced quantities, no packaging, no decision fatigue. Just looking at what’s there and working with that. Not out of scarcity, but out of trust.

Today, that turned into roasted tomatoes with basil, garlic and oil — on stale bread. A kind of pan con tomate, but rougher, messier, better. There was soil on the skins and oil running down my hands, but that only made it more satisfying.

Where flavour truly begins

You can taste the difference. Not because everything was perfectly measured, but because the story makes sense. The tomatoes came from five metres away. The basil grew faster than expected, by accident. And that olive oil? A gift from a neighbour with an orchard up in the hills.

It’s not haute cuisine, not a recipe. It’s improvisation — cooking with what’s on hand.

And that is more than enough.

Not everything needs to be planned. Sometimes it’s simply there in front of you. The garden decides, and you follow. And somewhere — in the scent of tomato, the hint of salt on your lips, and the sunlight just catching your plate — you realise: this is enough.

This story is part of our June special: The Month of the Kitchen Garden. Discover how we sow, harvest, cook, and celebrate — Costa style.