Tomato Sandwiches, Homegrown Tomatoes & the Good Life - No. 21
Plus, Kren’s Pasta, a timeless recipe all about tomatoes
An Atlanta newspaper colleague we all adored was so proud of her homegrown tomatoes - Bradleys, I believe they were - that she would bring a brown sackful to the newsroom on hot July mornings.
She’d plop the sack on her desk, and I sat next to Nancy Roquemore and witnessed this summer ritual. As midday approached, Nancy would look at the clock on the wall and at noon nestle the sack in the crook of her arm like she was holding a baby. She’d open a desk drawer for a jar of mayonnaise and a loaf of soft white bread, and she’d head downstairs to the employee cafeteria for lunch.
If you were a close friend of Nancy’s, you might follow her and be able to pull up a chair at her table where she positioned herself as a high priestess of office chatter and “mater sammiches.”
She would slather two slices of bread with mayo, slice the tomatoes onto one slice, and then mash the two pieces of bread together forming one of life’s most divine unions.
Growing tomatoes is like parenting: You get it right eventually
I fell out of love with growing my own tomatoes the year the squirrels robbed me of nearly every ripe Cherokee Purple on the vine. It was heartbreaking, and I threatened to never grow tomatoes again.
Until the next year.
That’s how backyard tomato farming works. You get burned by critters, mildew, fungus, birds, and bugs, so it’s no wonder you avoid tomatoes in the spring, walk right past them at the garden store and never make eye contact.
But ripe tomatoes are just too irresistible, so, inevitably, you cave and make space in the garden for a few plants or maybe even a dozen. And you vow to do things differently, like erecting an 8-foot garden fence, or picking the tomatoes earlier and placing them in the windowsill to finish ripening to order to beat the squirrels at their own game.
I am reminded of the song Homegrown Tomatoes about this time each year. Guy Clark who wrote the song says homegrown tomatoes and true love are the “only two things that money can’t buy.”
Obviously he doesn’t know what I’ve spent growing tomatoes…
And yet, he doesn’t sugar coat the work that goes into tomato farming:
“I forget all about the sweatin’ & diggin’
Everytime I go out & pick me a big one”
I’d add a few more lines to Guy Clark’s hit song to make it a bit more realistic:
”Homegrown tomatoes homegrown tomatoes
You don’t have to grow your homegrown tomatoes
Buy Mr. Stripey or some nice fat Bradleys
You don’t have to grow ‘em to love them madly.”
Growing tomatoes is a lot like raising children - not for everyone, super fulfilling but involves hard work and sleepless nights, especially if you’re battling squirrels.
You say “love apple,” I say tomato
Tomatoes are a member of the nightshade family, which means they are cousins to potatoes, eggplant, and the toxic “belladonna,” or deadly nightshade plant. No wonder then for centuries people were afraid of eating them. And for a brief time, they were called “love apples” and thought to be aphrodisiacs.
Today, tomatoes are indispensable in Italian and Spanish cooking, and yet, no one in Europe or Africa or Asia had even tasted them until the Spanish explorers found them growing in Mexico in the early 16th Century and brought them to Europe, according to Raymond Sokolov in his fascinating book, Why We Eat What We Eat.
While potatoes sustained colder climates of the world and corn became a staple of life for many populations, of the New World crops, tomatoes changed entire cuisines, Sokolov said. Can you imagine Italian pizza and Spanish gazpacho without them? Pan con tomate (crushed tomatoes, salt, and olive oil spread over crispy bread) would just be bread!
Why I grow and love tomatoes
I got serious about growing tomatoes in the last five years when two things happened - I could no longer tolerate the bland, mealy, abysmally hard supermarket tomatoes.
And secondly, and more importantly, when we moved to this house where there is enough sun to grow tomatoes.
Because tomatoes need a lot of full sun and warm-to-hot temperatures. And that’s why if the thermometer dips into the 60s or if you have an abnormally wet and cool June, it’s just not going to be a good tomato summer. You might as well plan to buy your tomatoes from someone who has been growing them in better conditions. I’m so grateful for my local farm stands where I can buy someone else’s tomatoes when mine don’t perform.
Because it’s really about eating that tomato in the summer and experiencing its exotic balance of acid and sweetness. It’s about the soft and warm texture of a tomato that has never hit refrigeration. And it is the myriad ways that a fresh ripe tomato enhances summer cooking. This is why I grow tomatoes.
I don’t think any of us are out to win a 4-H contest. We just want a decent tomato to slide on a sandwich. We want to sprinkle it with a little kosher salt, a dusting of Lawry’s, or as my mother did, a sprinkle of sugar. We want to chop ripe tomatoes and fold in a little garlic and salt, then basil and olive oil, and spoon it over toasted bread or pasta.
Tomatoes + pasta = heaven
Years back, my friend Kren Teren gave me her recipe for what she calls Kren’s Pasta because she’s shared the recipe with so many people that this is how they refer to it.
It is simply a tomato salad in a bowl - chopped ripe tomatoes, shredded mozzarella cheese, chopped fresh basil and minced parsley, some olive oil and minced garlic, plus salt and pepper, which you spoon over hot pasta or toss the two together. Mmmm…
I had no idea, really, the universal love of raw tomatoes and warm pasta until I was rereading Nora Ephron’s Heartburn where the recipe was buried. The narrator, Rachel Samstat, or actually Ephron herself in this autobiographical novel, shares a recipe for “linguine alla cecca,” or hot pasta with a cold, uncooked tomato and basil sauce. The recipe is like eating a summer salad, but with pasta.
To make the recipe in Heartburn, you boil five ripe tomatoes for one minute in water to cover, plunge the tomatoes in a bowl of ice water, and then slide off the skins, remove the core, and chop. You add a garlic clove sliced in two halves, 1/2 cup olive oil, 1 cup chopped fresh basil, and salt and red pepper flakes. Then you chill this tomato mixture for two hours so flavors can meld, remove the garlic, and the sauce is mixed with the pasta hot from the pot.
Honestly, I don’t think the sauce needs to be chilled. It could be left at room temperature, but that’s up to you to decide. And I’ll let you choose in Kren’s recipe that follows if there’s parsley involved and if the mozzarella is fresh or not. This minutiae is a way for you to personalize the recipe and make it yours.
But whatever you do, whatever pasta or sandwich or pizza or tomato pie you concoct this summer, remember it’s all about the tomatoes!
Tomatoes - like true love and quite possibly your children - do make life worth living.
What’s your favorite way to eat a summer tomato?
I found Linguine alla Cecca in Heartburn. Do you have a favorite recipe buried in a summer novel?
And now the recipe... Kren’s Pasta
Kren prefers the pasta on bottom and the sauce on top, but we like everything all mixed together. We use a mixture of yellow and red tomatoes if we have them, and I peel the tomatoes unless I am in a real hurry. We always use fresh mozzarella chunks or balls. The parsley is optional, Kren and I think, but if you have it, use it. And to embellish, add seedless Kalamata olives, canned artichokes, a drizzle of Balsamic vinegar crema, and even cooked and peeled shrimp! Pretty much any pasta works in this recipe - spaghetti, linguine, even penne. Kren says while this seems like a summer recipe she makes it in the winter with good canned tomatoes and dried basil, too. But what’s the best about this recipe is that you can do it ahead. Make the tomato “sauce” and let it rest on the counter or in the fridge and then boil pasta at the last minute.
Makes 6 servings
6 to 8 large fresh, ripe tomatoes, coarsely chopped
8 ounces shredded mozzarella or fresh mozzarella, cubed
1/4 cup (or more) fresh basil leaves, chopped
4 tablespoons good olive oil
2 cloves (or more) garlic, minced
1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley, optional
Salt and freshly ground black pepper (or red pepper flakes)
1 pound pasta of your choice
For the sauce, place the tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, olive oil, garlic, parsley, and salt and pepper in a large mixing bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature for 1 hour.
Cook the pasta by package directions and drain well. Toss with olive oil and serve the sauce to the side of the pasta. Or toss the hot, drained pasta into the bowl with the sauce and combine, then serve.
For Paid Subscribers this Friday: Tomato Pie!
Tomato Week continues, and we are perfecting the tomato pie. Paid subscribers get a few more perks, which is to be expected, and this week they learn of my journey and obsession with tomato pie, actually breaking that potluck favorite into steps to arrive at the best recipe to bake with summer tomatoes. Not yet a subscriber? Join us!
My husband set out what he thought were two cherry tomato plants in our earth boxes. Instead, one plant has produced little minis, about the size of a dime. They have a good taste, but their skins are thick and tough to chew. I hate to waste them. Any ideas on how to use?
Tomato sandwich or tomato pie!