The Art of the Tomato Sandwich

Guest Blog By Cyn

Along with the copious amounts of zucchini now coming from 4 plants. (we really only need one, but I cannot seem to 'thin' the seedlings), the first wave of tomatoes is coming on hot and heavy.  One of my favorite ways to indulge myself in summer is with a couple of slices of fresh-from-the-garden tomato on toast. Sounds simple, doesn't it?  The beauty of it is, it can be as simple, or as complicated as you like.  

Step One, make toast.  Fresh bread will not hold up to a ripe slice of summer so well, so please toast to armor your bread against a juicy meltdown.  The bread selection is key -- too soft and you'll end up wearing your bread, too hard and you'll break a tooth.  My favorite of late is a miche from our neighborhood Wegman's bakery, a nice hearty sourdough, toasted lightly.  

Step Two, choose a bread spread.  It's for the additional barrier to the wet tomato and to elevate the flavor as well, you are shooting for Tomato Nirvana after all.  Choose wisely, for while the correct spread will bring you life, the false spread will take it from you (apologies to the Grail Knight from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).  Mayo is the classic choice, Hellman's, Best Foods or your own homemade.  Those are your only choices.  And regular mayo please, no low fat, half fat, no fat ---eat the fat, every healthy diet includes some.  Pesto is another classic choice, and fabulous in conjunction with mayo.  Other less traditional, interesting choices include: olive tapenade, hummus, baba ganoush, smushed avocado or guacamole, Boursin, and since I am a relatively new transplant to The South, pimento cheese.

Step Three, adding a green.  Could be a couple leaves of basil or arugula, a super thin slice of cucumber, a nicely crusted piece of baked zucchini or eggplant slices, any sort of lettuce. I even have a friend who loves roasted red peppers on her tomato sandwiches.  If you would add it to a salad that includes tomatoes, you can add it to your sandwich.

Step Four, slice your garden fresh tomatoes. 

Horizontal or vertical slices are acceptable, no wedgies, please. And they must be garden fresh, from yours or someone who lives within 25 miles of where you're eating them. It's a rule.  Look it up.

And last but not least, Step Five, assemble.  This is not a sandwich that you can wrap up and take to the beach.  It must be assembled and eaten on site, in situ. Don't wait to eat this!  If you do wait, get out a cutting board, place the sandwich on it, cut into 1" squares and toss in a salad bowl.  You've waited out the sandwich and made panzanella, an Italian bread and tomato salad.  Wasn't that easy?  Only one piece of bread in the house?  Serve your tomato sandwich open face and call it bruschetta (say 'bruce ketta' -- roll your rrrrr a little and pause on the t's for bit, you'll sound like a Roman).

Here are some of my favorite combinations and tricks:

• rub your toast with a fresh garlic clove (on the inside please)
• grill your bread instead of toasting, charcoal fire imparts a nice smokiness but even a gas grill adds a je ne sais quoi (spell check is having a fit with that one)
• tomato, pesto, fresh mozzarella
• tomato, mayo, slices of avocado and Vidalia onion, cracked black pepper
• a boring classic, but for a very good reason, it's freakin' delicious -- garlic rubbed toast, tomato, basil leaves, fleur de sel
• a cold rainy day in October favorite:  toast your bread with a schmear of pimento cheese on top before assembling with your choice of tomato et al.
• my absolute favorite:  multigrain toast, mayo, avocado, and Nueske's bacon (my top reason for omnivore-ism) with thick slices of Green Zebra tomato and White Cherry tomato relish, drizzled with The Reluctant Foodie's famous balsamic vinaigrette, lots of napkins, big dopey smile

Lately we've been doing our part to keep the watermelon growers of the South in business, and I'm wondering, would watermelon and feta work on a tomato sandwich, with perhaps a bit of mint and basil? Can I add Thai fish sauce to the mayo and finish with a bit of sriracha??  What kind of bread do I hunt down for that combo??  Maybe I'll start with the watermelon and feta...

What are some of your favorite tomato sandwich combos?

Oven Roasting Fresh Tomatoes for Pasta Sauce

A while back I wrote a post about using the preserved tomato sauce from 2008 that we still had in our pantry. It was the last jar of what was the best tomato crop we have grown -- to date. This weekend we picked and roasted the first batch from this year's garden with high hopes that we could match the richness of flavor from that magical year.

I wanted to share the process, especially since it's so simple, at least up to the canning, which I won't cover here. Those of you that can know it's not really hard, just a little time consuming.

The first step is pretty obvious, get yourself some tomatoes. We like to grow our own, but you can also buy them from a farm or farm market. Here's a little tip if you decide to buy -- offer to buy the "seconds", you know, the less than perfect tomatoes that everyone else has passed on. They can have blemishes, partial spoilage and even the occasionally bug hole. Don't worry, you're going to cut away any bad parts and you'll be surprised how little waste there is. Most farmers will be happy to sell you these orphans at a reduced price. Don't be afraid to haggle! Later in the season we'll do exactly that after our plants have exhausted their yield.

For now though, we are happily picking beautiful fruit from our plants. Here's what we got this weekend.

As you can see we like o grow a pretty wide variety of tomatoes. This year we planted the following varieties: Tigerella, Juliette, Sausage, White Cherry, Sungold, Boxcar Willie, Legend, Hawaiian Pineapple, Green Zebra, Black Zebra, Tommy Toe, Brandywine Red and Viva Italia. Not all came ripe at the same time but many are in this batch.

First, give them a light rinse to remove any remaining soil. You'll need a good sharp paring knife and a sturdy, oven safe roasting pan with high sides, the kind you might cook your Thanksgiving turkey in (no, not one of those cheap foil one's you buy in a supermarket, this is going to get heavy). Cut the tomatoes in chunks. I know that's a technical term but I'm sure you'll figure it out. The point is that the relative size isn't that important. You can even leave the cherry tomatoes whole. Fill the roasting pan almost to the top if you have enough tomatoes. Don't worry, they'll cook down in size as they release their liquid and some of it boils off. Add multiple (another technical term) cloves of whole garlic. The amount is really "to taste" so you may need to experiment some. We like a lot and fortunately we just harvested our garlic from the garden a few weeks ago.

 

Add a liberal amount of extra virgin olive oil (1/4 - 1/2 cup) to the pan, stirring just enough to get things coated. Add salt (about 1 tsp Kosher salt per quart of tomatoes). Put the pan into a 425 degree oven and walk away -- at least for while. The tomatoes on top will eventually start to brown. This is a good time to open the oven just long enough to stir the mixture up bring new tomatoes to the top. Repeat this process every time the tomatoes on top brown. How do I know when they're done you ask? Well, it's a little bit of a feel thing but what we look for is that the water to pulp ratio is about even and all the tomatoes are "broken down." All the skins will be loose and mostly separated from the meat.

Remove the pan from the oven and move to somewhere safe, we use the stove top. Warning, warning, warning! At this point, the mixture is pretty loose and at pretty much the temperature of lava. Make sure the kids and pets are out of the way. Allow to cool to room temperature.

You'll need a way to remove the skins and seeds and convert this beautiful mixture into a silky smooth sauce. We use a hard food mill we bought from Williams Sonoma years ago. It's a little bit of work put wonderfully gratifying to do. The food mill grinds the tomato meat, passes the liquid and removes the skins which are then discarded.

The sauce is now ready to be used as is, "doctored" into a variety of other tomato based creations, canned for future use or even frozen! The roasted garlic flavor will be there no matter which of the methods you pick and no matter how long you store the canned or frozen sauce.

I've said it before but it bears repeating, there is nothing better than opening a jar of this magic in the middle of winter and getting that garden fresh taste.

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