While I know I tend to whine about the summer heat and humidity, I am keenly aware that it is the peak of the growing season for some of our favorite foods. Soon we will be able to hunt and gather our locally grown tomatoes and corn. And then it will be time for all the wretched pumpkin-spice-flavored everything. Right now I am preparing to indulge it a glut of tomato goodness.
Last weekend we made a delightfully spicy tomato pasta dish with local cherry tomatoes. Come fall I am hoping it will taste as good, and feel as warming as the scorching days of July. Later, in December, all we have to choose from will be hot house tomatoes, or those trucked in from California for a king’s ransom, and a guilt-inducing carbon footprint. Maybe this recipe will improve those sad, grocery store-bought tomatoes. Mr. Sanders said that he preferred it to Martha’s One-Dish Pasta, which is in our regular summer rotation for Monday night pasta dinners. This is good dish to add to that rotation, albeit one with a more autumnal vibe. Plus you get to use four cloves of garlic. Yumsters!
Pasta with Simple Cherry Tomato Sauce
Our friends at Food52 find a million ways to make a very simple tomato sandwich. Here, in the Spy Test Kitchens, we use Pepperidge Farm white bread, Hellmann’s Mayonnaise, a pinch of black pepper, a shake of Maldon salt and a couple of big, fat locally sourced slicing tomatoes, with a generous handful of potato chips as an elegant side dish. Follow your heart: Tomato Sandwich
The Spy Test Kitchen’s Caprese Salad – a suggestion
2 large ripe tomatoes — and this week you can go nuts with all the colorful heirloom tomatoes that abound
2 small balls fresh mozzarella — or you can just revel in as much cheese as you can lay your hands on
Sea salt and black pepper— we like Maldon, great fistsful of it
Olive oil — splash it on with abandon
Balsamic vinegar — not my fave, but Mr. Sanders loves lashings of it
A pile of basil — whatever you have on the windowsill, or from the container garden — it’s the sweet pungent smell of summer
Slice the tomatoes and mozzarella into thick slices. Arrange picturesquely on a platter or large plate, alternating tomato slices and mozzarella. Add salt and pepper, drizzle with beauteous chartreuse green olive oil, and delicate Pollock-esque drips of balsamic vinegar, scatter torn basil across the surface. Add fresh crusty bread and cool glasses of Vinho Verde, some candles, and Pink Martini on the Sonos. It’s not the Amalfi coast, but for a stinking hot summer’s night here in the States, it’s as close as we can get.
Once again our home-grown tomatoes are proving to be a disappointment. Could it be neglect? I haven’t gone out to weed much this summer. Between the mosquitoes in the back yard and all the heat, I could rationalize endlessly, and I can also state firmly and with great conviction that we are not anticipating much of a harvest. So far, our yield has been four tiny, anemic, grainy, bitsy, Tom’s Big Boys. The squirrels have been paying more attention to the raised bed garden this summer than I have. I admit defeat now, and I wish them the very best. I and hope that they will enjoy their own squirrelly-boy tomato feasts. I’m heading downtown to the farmers’ market this weekend to stock up on heirloom tomatoes and peaches. Luckily we can celebrate buying local: Buy Local Challenge Maybe I will get another basil plant for the kitchen windowsill, too. There will be lotsa tomato meals in our immediate future. August yawns ahead.
Stay cool! Hydrate! Read books! Buy local!
“Danger is to adventure what garlic is to spaghetti sauce. Without it, you just end up with stewed tomatoes.”
—Tom Robbins
Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.