A spice for kings, and a risotto with a difference

They say saffron is the most expensive spice in the world. Even if it weren’t, it wouldn’t be the one I use most often, but still there’s something special about it which I don’t think is just about perceptions of value.

There’s the golden colour, although you can get that from other spices like turmeric. For me it’s the aroma and flavour that’s special – sometimes described as hay-like, though I think it’s richer and more complex than that. (Not that I go round sniffing hay, you understand.) It's not the strongest-tasting spice, but there's a depth to it, like good wine. It deserves to take centre stage in a dish, and I think introducing other spices runs the risk of masking it too much. A saffron risotto is a wonderful thing, if not exactly the best way to get your five-a-day.

I recently tried an interesting risotto variant. Having found some reasonable late-season tomatoes, I set about making Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s recipe for rice, saffron and tomatoes. This recipe comes from his book Three Good Things on a Plate. I know new cookery books have to have some kind of concept these days, but this one is slightly disingenuous - I haven't yet found a recipe which only uses three ingredients. I suppose the idea is that you have three central ingredients, three main flavours. This rice recipe has fewer ingredients than some in the book but even so I'd argue there are four flavours here, because the garlic plays an important part too. Unlike a conventional risotto, there's no cheese, but I don't think it needs it.

If you love saffron and tomatoes, this is a beautiful dish. Actually, I love saffron so much that I almost felt that the flavour of the tomatoes got in the way at times, but I guess you can't just serve a plate of saffron-flavoured rice. Or can you?

I ate this dish twice: once with the tomatoes roasted for half an hour, as suggested in the recipe, and once with them roasted for an hour. Both were delicious, but the more roasted tomatoes were more shrunken, with an extra intense flavour. The picture above is of the half-hour tomatoes. I'm very sceptical that the tomatoes in this picture have only been cooked for half an hour!

Incidentally, I left out the butter in a gesture towards healthy eating (I didn't use the sugar either, because I don't think decent tomatoes need it), and it didn't seem any the worse for it.