On Tomatoes

Those fleeting summer beauties!

Hello and welcome to all of our new readers! I’m thrilled and humbled that you’ve found your way over to this corner of Substack. You can read a little bit more about Page & Plate 2.0 here. This is the Friday recipe post for paid subscribers. Typically, new posts are published on Tuesdays. Next week, we’re digging into recipe writing and the infamous instruction to “Taste and adjust,” and then paid subscribers will get a recipe for blueberry citrus cake. There is a hard stop ahead, which sucks, but hey: I need to provide my cats with the life they deserve somehow!

Tomatoes are, quite simply, a treat like no other. They are at once heavy and almost meat-like and floral and linen-light. They are full of contradictions, as we all are. They are perfect, and I dream of them all year until I finally see them at the farmers’ markets. As soon as I’ve eaten my first tomato toast, I set about dreading about the day that the tomatoes go out of season.

I solve for this worry by telling myself I’ll roast a big batch of tomatoes and store them away for winter. I pat myself on the back, buy an ungodly amount of canning tomatoes, and set forth on a day of chopping, roasting, stirring, and overheating, by the end of which, I’ve sworn I’ll never touch another tomato as long as I live. Every year, I repeat this process, knowing exactly how it will end, but hey—that’s show biz, baby.

I used to be very intense about doing the proper canning thing: pulling herbs and such out to prevent botulism, adding everything to a glass jar, treating with lemon juice, sealing it properly, etc., etc., etc. Then, one day, I realized that these tomatoes absolutely never lasted more than a month and just started plopping them into jars, herbs and all, and calling it a day. You should choose your own adventure and remember that I am not a doctor or a food safety expert THANK GOD. At this point, I don’t even bother to peel the skins off! I’m free.

Stains pictured here are brought to you by a long roast with increasingly high temperatures!

Roasted tomatoes are not the most exciting, original recipe in the world (see my recent piece for Stained Page News, wherein I bemoan this very subject for a delightful dose of irony!), but these (I hope) are something different. Personally, I love tomatoes in any form, but sometimes they get over-stewed and stringy when they’re cooked on their own. By adding other ingredients bursting with fat and salt, cooking these at varying heat levels, and adding wine (important!) for depth of flavor, I think I’ve solved for originality and deliciousness.

Ask your local tomato farmer for canning tomatoes, and use those. Ignore any bruises or imperfections as you chop them up. Most importantly, don’t forget to snag a bite, freshly sprinkled with salt, before you pop them in the oven.

The last thing I’ll say before I let these tomatoes shine like the stars they are is that it’s worth seeking out an enamel-coated baking apparatus here. Metal cookware (aluminum in particular) can react with acidic foods like…everything I call for in this recipe, which will affect both the taste of the tomatoes and the longevity of your baking tins. I got my knock-off Dutch oven on Amazon, and I have absolutely zero regrets.

Just give me a spoon and a bowl of this, and I’m a happy camper.