Heaven is a blue bowl of red, red tomatoes

A friend and I ate at a new restaurant last night and at the end of the meal the chef (a three-Michelin star one too!) came out and took us on a tour of his kitchens. He was full of passion for food and cooking, pointing out how all his vegetables were imported from Italy and look, how ripe and perfect the tomatoes are and how fresh the fish from Hokkaido. To our delighted surprise my friend and I found ourselves with a small gift of a bunch of the tomatoes. Of course I couldn't wait to sample them, and this morning I had them for my first breakfast (a bad Hobbit habit I know, having more than one brekkie). What could be a more heavenly start to a fine summer's day than a blue-patterned bowl of bite-size, perfectly ripe Italian tomatoes, doused with extra virgin olive oil, with a little salt and a few basil leaves added to provide that perfect salty-herbal counterpoint to the sweetness? Tomato really is fruit!