A tomato, onion and goats' cheese bake

I cook with onions most days, but it's rare that they move from a supporting role to a starring one. I think of them as a background ingredient. Yet when they take centre stage they can be wonderful.

There's plenty to love about onions - they're cheap, they grow well in this country, and they store quite well too (though the smell of a past-it onion is really not pleasant at all).

I particularly like the way some slow cooking makes them mellower than you would imagine, with a soft, almost melting texture. Baking onions whole in their skins, then peeling and eating them as a side vegetable, is a good way to make them more prominent in your meal.

But I also think they can be the focus of attention, as in this bake from BBC Good Food - it's a kind of savoury crumble. I skipped out the sugar and water from the sauce, as neither seemed necessary, but added a good pinch of dried oregano and some black pepper. I also used soft goats' cheese instead of a goats' cheese log and fresh wholemeal breadcrumbs instead of white, and the dish didn't seem any the worse for that.

This is a great storecupboard dish, as most of the ingredients are things you're likely to have anyway (well, perhaps not the goat's cheese which I did buy specially). Depending on the cost of your goats' cheese, it can be a fairly frugal meal, and if you make extra, as I did here, it makes delicious leftovers for the next day too.