Persian fetta and vine tomatoes with fettuccine.

The plant had outlasted summer. It didn’t sicken and grow spindly and yellow like the others, but retained its healthy greenness and even seemed to grow, although that might have been illusory. It was situated in the spot that gets the most sun; moreover, no tomato vine has been planted there in the almost twenty years we have had this house, although whether that theory (don't plant tomatoes twice in the same spot) holds water, who knows.

 Every year, I rip them out automatically, harvest and let the green fruit ripen in cardboard boxes. This year I left the healthy one in the ground, and it continued to produce bunches of green-yellow orbs. And I kept harvesting them and ripening them and using them. And now it is mid-winter and I have seasonal tomatoes. Climate change, everyone says. Maybe. I don't know.

Persian fetta and fresh tomatoes with fettuccine. 

No apologies for this flagrantly summerish dish in the depths of winter; after all, I make stews and brisket and lasagne and roasts in summer, so why not?

Also, it's dead easy, especially if you have a Persian fetta supplier nearby. I had picked up a jar at the new fresh food store, F.O.Y. (Food On Young). Persian fetta has a creamy, buttery texture with a less intense flavour than the blatantly salty Greek version and, of course, it helps that it comes immersed in olive oil with whole black peppers and a dried sprig of oregano. You could eat it out of the jar or just smear it thickly across a piece of fresh ciabatta.

I sliced the tomatoes through their equators into cute hemispheres with cores of an intriguing orange-red, the colour of those old plates of the solar-flaring sun in 1950s encyclopedias. 

Meanwhile, I cooked a pack of fresh fettuccine in salted water and drained it, leaving a little of the cooking water in the pan, which I put back on a low flame, adding a couple of chopped garlic cloves, a dash of olive oil and the halved tomatoes, to warm through.

To assemble, I crumbled some fetta over the cooked pasta, and topped it with the garlic and warmed tomatoes. To finish, I scattered some fresh chopped parsley and basil, and a shower of parmesan so the fetta didn't have to do all the work.