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The Tomatoes Are Ready. Everything Else Can Wait.
Published about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader,
For most of the year a tomato is a sad, pink, mealy thing I refuse to buy. Then for about six weeks in summer it becomes the best thing in the kitchen, and I build half my meals around it. A real July tomato, still warm from the garden or the market, needs almost nothing done to it. That is the whole point of tomato season. It is the one stretch of the year when the best thing you can do to your food is get out of its way. Good salt, good oil, maybe some torn basil and a slab of fresh mozzarella, and you are done. So while the good ones are here, let me hand you the handful of ways I cook them all summer until they are gone.
When the Tomato is the Point
Never refrigerate a good tomato. The fridge turns the texture grainy and flattens the taste. Keep them on the counter, and cut only what you can eat.
Salt and wait ten minutes. Salt pulls out a little juice and concentrates the flavor. A sliced tomato is better salted early than at the table.
Match the cut to the tomato. Big slicers for stacking and caprese; small ones halved for salads; the ugly cracked ones for sauce and gazpacho.
Good oil is doing half the work. With this little cooking, the olive oil is an ingredient, not a lubricant. Use the bottle you actually like.
Eat them every way before they are gone. Raw, in a tart, blitzed into cold soup. Six weeks goes fast; the lineup is below.
This fresh tomato tart is laden with slices of summer tomato—preferably heirloom—on an herbed crust topped with creamy goat cheese and finished with a pesto vinaigrette. Elegant and impressive yet (shhhhh!) really quite easy.
Burrata is like fresh mozzarella gone to finishing school. A burlesque dancing finishing school. It's creamy and cheesy and versatile as heck and absolutely sufficient simply on its own with a drizzle of oil and grilled bread.
Tomatoes and labneh, or white cheese, are staples on breakfast and supper tables. The cheese is usually eaten with bread, sometimes with za’atar, and the tomatoes are enjoyed plainly on the side. This salad takes those ingredients and makes it into a pretty dish with bread.
This easy vegetarian pizza is loaded with shaved zucchini, peach slices, creamy burrata cheese, and arugula. Perfect for meatless Monday or a casual backyard gathering.
This sweet and sticky no-pectin tomato jam is made with caramelized onions, toasted spices, and slowly simmered Roma tomatoes. You'll be putting it on everything.
This easy gazpacho is a chilled summer soup made with tomatoes, cucumber, pepper, and onion blitzed in the blender and seasoned with hot sauce. Simple, fresh, and healthy.
Why, hello! Leite's Culinaria is the James Beard Award-winning site that helps home cooks and bakers put dinner on the table and laughs in the kitchen. Hungry for more? Join 40,000 food lovers and subscribe.
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