Tomatoes stuffed with blue cheese

Stuffed tomato!

So, a while ago, I experimented with stuffing leeks with blue cheese, with the stuffing mixture adapted from Ottolenghi's fantastic stuffed onions.  I thought the leeks were a little tough but I really liked the stuffing mixture, so I decided that I'd use it again, this time for stuffing tomatoes.

I scooped out the insides of nine tomatoes and left them upside down on some kitchen towel while I dealt with the filling, get them as dry inside as reasonably possible.

Hollowed out tomato

Hollowed out tomatoes

The stuffing was slightly different this time to the time with the leeks, because of having slightly different ingredients on hand but was broadly similar:  two slices of bread's worth of breadcrumbs, 6 finely chopped spring onions, three cloves of garlic finely minced, 300g of Danish blue, a handful of chopped parsley, a teaspoon of mustard, a glug of olive oil and salt and black pepper.

Stuffing

Tomatoes ready for stuffing

Tomatoes ready for stuffing

I then stuffed the tomatoes and baked for 20 minutes at 200 degrees C.

Cooked stuffed tomatoes

Verdict:  very nice, though probably more of a starter than a main course (unless you serve with something else - we had garlic bread with them).  If you want the tomatoes to be more roasted, it's probably worth baking them for longer (which probably requires putting the tops back on them so that the stuffing doesn't get burnt or baking them for five minutes or so before stuffing them.) We quite liked them at the level of roasted they were, though.

Cooked stuffed tomatoes

Leeks stuffed with blue cheese

Mmm, leeks

I really love Ottolenghi's stuffed onions, as I've posted about before, so I figured I might try doing something similar with leeks.  So, I did.

I cut the leeks so that I had the outer circles so that I could stuff them as long tubes, then - as the Ottolenghi recipe does with onion shells - boiled them in white wine and stock
for five minutes.

Leek tubes

Leek tube

Because I'm silly, I forgot that I'd need a larger pan than usual and heated up the stock and white wine in the pan I usually use for the onions.  I'm lazy about washing up so, rather than pour it into a large pan, I just put the leeks in the small pan anyway and turned them upside down after five minutes to do the other ends.  If you are less silly, you might just want to use a larger pan..

Less than sensible leek cooking method

While that was happening, I made some stuffing: finely chopped inside bits of the leeks, two slices of bread's worth of breadcrumbs, three small tomatoes finely chopped, about 300g of Danish Blue crumbled, 100g of Gruyere chopped, a teaspoon of mustard, a glug of olive oil, three cloves of garlic finely chopped, salt and black pepper.

Stuffing

Stuffing close up

Then, I stuffed the leeks and put them (cut side down) in the buttered pan, put enough of the stock and white wine over them to cover the base comfortably and baked for 25 minutes on 200 degrees C.

Stuffed and ready to go

Stuffed and ready to go

The result:  nice, but the leeks were a little tough, I suspect that they'd be nicer if boiled in stock for a little longer. There were a few leek skins that didn't quite fit in the oven dish so I did those as little parcels in another pan and, actually, these were much easier to get out of the dish than the long tubes were so I think that's another lesson for next time!  The stuffing was delicious, though, and I'm very tempted to use it again in other contexts - e.g. I might try stuffing onions with it next time..  or tomatoes.

Cooked leek tubes

Cooked leek parcels