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I hate the end of summer.

So a kind of summery mixture of things to end the best season of all.

Bruschetta
Dice some tomato as finely as you can. If you have a good knife, you'll get really fine dice. If your knife is not so sharp, it will turn to mush. No matter. Just cut it as well as you can. Now dice some onion in a ratio of one part onion to three parts tomato. Finely slice a few sprigs of parsley and mix them all together. Lightly toast some slices of bread on one side. Spread some home-made pesto on the untoasted side and cut the toast into bite-sized sections. Take a teaspoon and carefully spoon the mixture onto the toast.

Pumpkin and red pepper soup with chick peas
Roast six or seven peeled pumpkin pieces 45 minutes or until soft. Roast a red bell pepper until the skin blackens. Remove the skin and the core leaving just the red flesh. Puree them in a litre of chicken stock. Add a dash of coriander (cilantro) powder. Cook twenty minutes. When it reaches a smooth consistency, add a drained can of chick peas and heat through. Serve with a dollop of yogurt or sour cream, a dash of paprika and a garnish of parsley.

Pasta with anchovies, semi-dried tomato and chili
Slowly bake small halved tomatoes until 'semi-dry', an almost caralemised texture. This will take several hours. Drizzle a little olive oil over them towards the end.

Cook your pasta, ordinary spaghetti works well with this. When cooked, drain and then toss it all in a big white serving dish with some of the tomatoes and a small jar or can of anchovies, drained of most of its oil. The residual oil on the tomatoes and remaining on the anchovies is enough, no extra is needed.

This dish has a salty bite added to by the sweet/acid richness of the tomatoes all carried beautifully by the blandness of the pasta. It's a great dish, especially served outside in the dying light of a late summer evening. A nice rich white such as a semillon is good, some folks find a red doesn't pair well with dishes containing fish.

Dessert
After all that, nothing more than short espresso coffee and those little Italian style biscuits. Maybe some nice lemon gelati to go with the biscuits. OK, or some Tiramisu, if you insist.

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