Put cherry tomatoes in a roasting tin, spray or drizzle with a little olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast for 20 minutes, then remove from the oven.
Heat vegetable stock in a medium pan and keep warm on the hob (do not boil as you do not want the liquid to evaporate).
Finely slice the garlic, and sauté with a little of the stock in a wide, non-stick, heavy-based pan until soft.
Add the rice and stir for a minute.
Add the passata to the hot stock and warm through, making sure it does not boil.
Ladle about 1/4 of the passata/stock mix into the rice and allow the rice to absorb the liquid, stirring frequently. Adjust the heat if necessary so that the rice is just simmering.
When all the liquid has been absorbed add another quarter of the passata/stock mix.
Continue until all the passata/stock mix has been added and the rice has absorbed almost all of the liquid (around 20 minutes).
The rice should be cooked through but still have some bite, and should still be wet. Check the seasoning and add salt and pepper to taste. Take off the heat.
Stir most of the tomatoes through the risotto.
Spoon into 4 warm pasta bowls and top with the remaining tomatoes.
Drizzle with a little more olive oil if liked.
Optional extras:
sprinkle some dried thyme and a little sugar onto the tomatoes before baking to really bring out the flavor
add a finely chopped shallot with the garlic in step 4 and sauté until soft
add 30 ml of white wine after step 5, and reduce until almost completely evaporated before starting to add the passata/stock mix
if you can’t find passata with basil, use plain passata and a teaspoon of dried basil.
sprinkle the risotto with torn fresh basil leaves/chopped parsley/nutritional yeast before serving
