No other ingredient makes me more nostalgic about my childhood, college years, and adulthood than the tomato.  Proust had the petite madeleine.  I have the tomato, base ingredient of my grandmother’s Italian gravy.

My grandmother unknowingly taught me a few simple kitchen tricks involving tomato sauce that define her brand of Italian cuisine.  People always told her to open a restaurant, write a cookbook, or write down the recipe for her sauce.  She still doesn’t understand why anyone would want a card with exact directions.  Why wouldn’t they want to cultivate their own?  If they married into the family, okay.  Italians are like that.  But for her to just give away what took years to create . . . no way.

In Goodfellas Henry Hill gets busted and snitches.  You’d think he’d be happy to be alive and sunning in Parts Unknown, America.  Instead he bitches that his take-out pasta tastes like “egg noodles and ketchup”.  When I moved to Lake Charles, LA for graduate school this is exactly how I felt.  I needed to bring Cleveland to cajun country and show my Louisiana friends a tomato sauce that tastes like a tomato is boring.

On a graduate student’s salary and workload, I had to be economical with my money and time.  I didn’t have all day Saturday to make a sauce and all day Sunday to sit and watch, add some garlic, reevaluate, add more basil, then stir, then taste, then stir . . . so I made it simple--Which brings up my grandmother’s tomato sauce kitchen tricks that can bring authentic Italy to your kitchen.

1. Take your time, unless you don’t have any: I’m not big on math or logic, but this credo is fact.  Good food takes time.  Simmer your sauce as long as possible, but don’t succumb to store bought sauce, even if all you have is an hour or two.  Let your sense of smell and taste guide how much garlic, basil, etc. You add when in a pinch--but be careful and . . .
2. Streamline: Using a lot of herbs, especially when you’re short on time, can make sauce bitter and unsalvageable.  If you overindulge a little even adding water can’t save it.  To give your sauce great flavor add sausage (any store brand will work) but make your own meatballs.  You can cook them in a huge batch days or weeks before needing them for your sauce.  My grandmother always has a few dozen meatballs in the freezer.  They make a great snack--and are there any time you want to make a quick sauce.  Trying to make meatballs and sauce at the same time is a bit messy and overwhelming.  Use time and modern appliances to your advantage.  But make sure both the meatballs and sausage contain . . .
3. Fennel: The defining characteristic of how to give tomato sauce a thick, rich flavor is fennel.  I’m not down with thin sauce.  It’s supposed to stick to the noodle, not the plate.  But I don’t like huge chucks of tomato in my sauce either.  Adding fennel seed to your meatball recipe (when you think you’ve added too much--keep going, trust me) will do two things: it will give your meatball some added texture and your sauce flavor without the risk of being over garlicky or bitter.  Add garlic, basil, etc to your meatball recipe and let the meatballs do the flavoring.  Once you’re done simmering and spicing there’s one more way to accentuate your sauce . . .
4. Respect your pasta: I’ve already expressed my hatred for thin sauce.  There’s nothing I hate more than being served under-drained pasta with a scoop of watery sauce.  Of course pasta will carry a little water to the plate.  To reduce water content: salt your water before boiling and cook your pasta al dente. Bring your water to a complete boil, add the pasta, and cook for no longer than 5-7 minutes.  Right when the snap is out of your spaghetti--it’s done.  If you cook ravioli while watching Glee and see two sets of commercials--it’s ready.  The more you overcook pasta the more difficult it’s going to be to get the water out.  If you do happen to overcook and still want to taste the tomato sauce, drain the pasta and before adding red gravy sprinkle it with . . .
5. Pecorino Romano: After your pasta is drained, transfer it to a serving bowl and add grated Pecorino Romano (you can usually find it in bulk at a local Italian store or upscale grocery).  Add a few ladles of sauce and stir.  Notice how the cheese acts as a binding agent between the sauce and noodle.  Your sauce will go farther.  This simple step can even make store bought sauce taste homemade.  The Pecorino’s saltiness brings out the natural taste of the tomato and is worth every penny.  Substitute Kraft parmesan if you have to--but add cheese and mix your pasta before serving your guests.  Keep the mess in the kitchen, not your kitchen table.

Karen Babine teaches composition at Bowling Green State University.  Her essays have most recently appeared in Weber: The Contemporary West, River Teeth, Ascent, Fugue, and are forthcoming in North Dakota Quarterly.

Summer

These tomatoes are so ripe and perfect, it’s like cutting into butter.  Less than an hour off the vine, a serendipity from a friend who told me that her neighbor had told them to come and pick all they wanted, because he couldn’t use them all.  I don’t know all the varieties, but I have cherry tomatoes that are purple, red oblong ones that aren’t any bigger than my thumb, those that look like Romas, and those that are short and squat.  They’re still warm.  All I want to do is slice them, spread the slices out like a fan on my plate, sprinkle them with coarse salt, and introduce them to my fork.

These are so perfectly ripe that they nearly disintegrate once I salt them.  The juice is so deep on the plate that I probably should have used a bowl.  I want to save the juice for the end, but there’s so much of it that I have to slurp it before the tomatoes themselves are gone.  Drinking the tomato juice myself is both supreme pleasure and a reminder of loss, since when I was growing up, my sprite of a grandfather always got to drink the juice off the plate.  Nobody else.   It never occurred to any of us to ask, because it was always his. In the last few years of his life, his Parkinsons made the little tradition hard to watch—and then he stopped drinking it altogether because of the shakes.  Now he’s gone, nearly four years ago, and I learn that my grandmother never liked tomatoes.

Fall

Last week, I brought home a peck of canning tomatoes from the farmer’s market. My friend John’s family sells them and he always gives me a discount.  When I got home, I pulled out my stock pot, my canning tongs and funnel, my old cake pan that I use for boiling jars, the jars, the lids, and the rings.  I put an old beach towel on my kitchen table to protect it.  I placed the cake pan over two burners, filled it with water and the lids, the rings, and the jars—pints today—and turned both burners on high.  I filled a saucepan with water to boil—so I could skin the tomatoes—and then pulled a couple of bowls out of the cupboard.  One for garbage, one for the skinned tomatoes, and one for the hot tomatoes to cool after I’d dunked them in the boiling water.

In my preparations, I also pull out my canning journal, which has my notes from doing this last year.  It’s how I remember how many tomatoes I got last year and whether that was enough or not enough. I don’t like the oven canning method of tomatoes that my sister recommended, so I’m not going to do that again. Most importantly, it really takes three years to get the canning mentality right. In the first year, you don’t can enough to get you through the winter, so it’s quickly gone. In the second year, you can enough, but you’re worried about running out, so you hoard it and you’re left with shelves of food by the next summer. By the third year, you’ve got both the proportions right and you’ve gotten over the hoarding. The food is there to eat, after all.  And I write it down, so I remember for the next year.

Winter

In the last couple of days, I’ve made a serious dent in my tomato stores. I’d been wanting my mother’s cream of tomato soup recipe for months before she sent it to me and the recipe she sent me had where she’d gotten it written at the top:  “Laporte Home Ec, October 1984” and that brought back all those fuzzy pre-age-five memories that never get any clearer, winter memories of playing in the snow that was taller than I was. It was one of those winter soups that always made things a little bit warmer, simply because of the summer ingredients that we’d gardened and carefully preserved for an occasion just like this. Summer came back in a rush as I pulled a quart of tomatoes I’d canned months ago off the pantry shelf in the back of my house. And I pulled a plastic bag of frozen roasted tomatoes out of the freezer as well.  I realized that next year, these oven-roasted tomatoes will be something I will dedicate more energy to.  Life’s just more fun with them.

Spring

It’s the ten year anniversary of my first introduction to Galway, Ireland.  Every spring makes me a little nostalgic, mostly because of the rain, but this spring is different.  Spring is full of Irish flavor for me, Irish white cheddar, Irish soda bread, Irish butter. I’ve never been able to find good Irish bacon here, but every once in a while, I’ll buy some tomatoes and fry up some eggs and consider that my version of an Irish breakfast. Tomatoes are a staple breakfast item in Ireland.  Sometimes the quarter of tomato is cooked for just a minute under a hot broiler or it’s served cold and raw—either is fine with me.  It’s a bit of bright sweet to balance the rich salt of the eggs and Irish bacon, soft to the contrast to the toast.  Then I’ll make myself a pot of tea strong enough for a mouse to trot across, then doctor it up with some cream and sugar in honor of those months of Irish tea, and sit down to a plate full of memories.

Photography by Amanda McGuire

Melissa Askren Edgehouse, assistant professor of education at the University of Mount Union in Alliance, Ohio, cooks, travels, cleans, shops, teaches, and intermittently authors lisssdishes.wordpress.com.

Food challenges fascinate me.  I love shows like Iron Chef where a secret ingredient dictates each course.  I travel with my mother and grandmother to Florida frequently in the spring, and because they love to save money and I love to cook, we rarely eat out.  The day we arrive, I try to convince them to not grocery shop with me--only so I can buy as much food as I want.  I typically try to plan meals ahead and have a list in hand, but I always deviate from it.  The biggest goal, however, is to use whatever we get.  I’d rather not make extra trips to the store and lose valuable beach time, but my mom and grandma would rather not have to throw away any food before we depart.  The last day is always a challenge for me, though I’ll admit that I have sneakily thrown out food that just didn’t work for our last day.  Not this time.  I was using everything.

On the last day of our most recent trip, we had a few items left in the fridge: two giant Ugly tomatoes, a tiny head of Bibb lettuce, four eggs, about a half-pound of cooked bacon, one avocado, eight slices of bread, a few splashes of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper.  That’s it.  No condiments or dressings.  No leftover spices.  I smelled a challenge.

I considered making a salad with a balsamic vinaigrette for our last dinner, but there really wasn’t enough lettuce or vinegar for the three of us.  I didn’t want to make breakfast the next morning since we had an early flight, so bacon, eggs, and dry toast was out.  Without chips and a lime, guacamole wouldn’t work.  Hmmm...

Our early-in-the-week plan with the bread, bacon, lettuce, and tomatoes was to make BLTs.  The Florida tomatoes were so fresh, juicy, and delicious in May that we put BLTs at the top of our lunch menu options for the week.  In fact, each spring, when Florida tomatoes are at their prime, we gobble them up like candy.  In salads, with mozzarella and basil, on pizzas, in sauces: the possibilities are certainly endless.  We love to just cut them into wedges, add some salt and pepper, and drizzle a little oil and balsamic on the beauties.  They’re the perfect food.  But, the best summer sandwiches are BLTs.  Tomatoes tend to disappoint in Ohio (other than during the late summer months), so we took advantage of our southern travels and prominently featured the tomato in each lunch that week: three BLTs, one grilled Swiss and tomato sandwich, and two tomato salads.  It’s always a treat to eat garden tomatoes in May.  Waiting until August in Ohio is torture.

As I stared into the fridge, I knew making BLTs again wouldn’t account for the eggs, that avocado, and the, according to my grandmother, “expensive” balsamic and oil.  I knew they’d say I bought too much.  Then I remembered Thomas Keller’s version of a BLT, a BLT Fried Egg-and-Cheese Sandwich, and the ever-popular California BLT—one with avocado—that’s sometimes called a BLAT.  I also remembered how scrumptious a balsamic fried egg is on pizza and figured it could translate well to sandwich form.  

There was no way I was wasting the tomatoes (or the bacon, for that matter), so I decided to combine it all.  

Thus, the invention of TABLE Sandwiches.  

I’m quite sure I didn’t actually invent these, but I have yet to find a decent website that includes the following precise ingredients into a sandwich, and they certainly don’t use the same acronym.  Many include mayo or cheese (aren’t these fattening enough?), and some use herbs instead of lettuce, but none used a balsamic fried egg.  Regardless of preference, before making one, carefully consider the following:

1. Only the best tomatoes will make this sandwich superb.  Use lousy tomatoes, expect lousy sandwiches.
2. The parenthetical descriptions of ingredients are my favorite versions of each item, but they’re only suggestions.  Use what you have/like.
3. Again, use homegrown, red tomatoes that smell like a garden, and the result will be divine.  Go ahead and try these in the winter with some hard, pinkish tomatoes with white cores.  Good luck swallowing the sandwich.  You’ll be eating an ABLE after just one bite.

As for the recipe for this mega-sandwich, there isn’t much to it.  While I’ve included some detail, it’s not really necessary.  Throw everything on some toast and enjoy (and only dream of eating TABLE sandwiches in February).

TABLE Sandwiches

Ingredients

• 1 tomato, super-ripe, juicy, cored, and sliced to desired thickness (Ugly tomatoes are fantastic)
• 1 avocado, pitted and peeled (slightly firm for slices, ripe for a spread)
• 6-8 slices bacon, cooked (slab, peppered bacon works well with these)
• 4 medium green leaf lettuce leaves (Bibb, red leaf, and Romaine are great, too)
• 4 slices bread (a rustic, whole wheat is my favorite)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar (a high quality variety makes a huge difference--always)
• dash Kosher salt
• dash black pepper, freshly ground

Preparation

1. Prepare a mise en place by setting out the sliced tomatoes, lettuce pieces, and cooked bacon.
2. Slice the avocado, or make a spread (especially for ripe ones) by mashing it with a dash of cumin, salt, and hot pepper sauce, a little lime juice, and a chopped cilantro sprig.  Add avocado slices/spread to mise en place.
3. Toast the bread.  Add it to the line-up, too.
4. Heat oil in a medium frying pan on medium-high heat.
5. When the oil is hot, add each egg.  Once the edges of the eggs are a little brown, flip them, and add the balsamic, salt, and pepper.  Cook to desired doneness, but leave the yolk slightly runny.
6. Assemble the sandwiches with all ingredients.
7. Cut sandwiches in half and serve immediately.

Yields 2 sandwiches

Callista Buchen is a writer, student, and teacher. She has an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University and an MA in literature from the University of Oregon. Her work has previously appeared in The Collagist, Mid-American Review, Gargyole, Gigantic, and many others. Callista’s new blog documents her upcoming move across the country.

I’m not much of a cook. I don’t know anything about canning, poaching, or pickling. I have mixed up my sugar and salt, my tablespoons and teaspoons. I have even burned soup. The thing is, despite all my troubles at the stove, I really, really, like to eat. No, love to eat. If I could take a bath in a big tub of eating, I would.

I’m lucky to have a husband who not only likes to cook but also excels at it, and practice has slowly improved my non-existent skills to passable in the kitchen. Delicious, I am always saying when my husband asks what to make for dinner. Something delicious. For me, it is this deliciousness that brackets time and sustains memory. A something delicious is a necessary bookend to all other experiences. Plus it makes life so much more, well, sensuous. And what could be more sensuous than the tomato?

For a long time, I was afraid of the tomato and woefully afraid of food (and the sensuous). I wanted my tomato in ketchup or pizza sauce or not at all, and even then, I wasn’t always sold. I still prefer mustard to ketchup and I would only eat pizza by scraping everything off the crust, including the sauce. I remember a time in middle school when my friend Amanda Wicker brought a tomato to our middle school lunch cafeteria. She sat down at the long table and bit into it like an apple. I was amazed. You can do that? I asked. I couldn’t watch.

Years later, in college, a stomach problem meant I had to stop eating acidic food for a while, no oranges, no lemon juice, and definitely no tomatoes. I ate a lot of toast, a lot of rice. I didn’t eat real food for years, slowly re-introducing my body to the delicious one item a time. It was during this reintroduction that I fell in love with tomatoes, quite by accident, though I’m particular. I don’t want old, tired tomatoes, or unripe ones that crunch under the knife. It is the tomatoes from my backyard garden that taste like sun and rain and mystery and make me grateful for the act of eating, for the invention of deliciousness. And talk about sensual!

Recently, I returned from a brief trip to San Francisco, where deliciousness isn’t so much a desire but a way of life. The trip was a demanding one, a visit with my in-laws that didn’t go as well as anyone involved would’ve liked. We share a heavy, difficult history, with plenty of fault to share around. On this trip, as old wounds proved raw and new ones were exposed, our shared experience of delicious meals, of sensuous ingredients, created room for reconciliation.

We continue to struggle, but the connection between food, memory, and feeling has given us the opportunity to grow. I remember what I ate our first night in town (spinach risotto with sundried tomatoes—don’t you just love sundried tomatoes? The sweet-salty tomato that is nearly too intense to bear? Sundried tomatoes always make me think of love and the lengthening of summer), as well as our final meal together. Worn out and disappointed with the visit and each other, we ate at Bridges Restaurant, which appears in the final scenes of Mrs. Doubtfire. I ordered the night’s special, sea bass over mushroom risotto, surrounded by delicate cherry tomatoes in balsamic vinegar. It was the kind of meal, the kind of tomatoes, that will make you believe. Past the swirl of emotion and hurt, tomatoes and vinegar gave me something to grab onto, grounding me in a way that melted into healing.

After all, there is something about the gleam on a tomato that promises hope in a way you can actually taste. Its very ancientness suggests permanence and renewal, that yes, we will move on, we will go through, we will suffer loss, pain, and illness, but there will still be something delicious on the other side.

My husband and I have been home for a several weeks now, and we’re currently in the midst of other challenges. We will move a few states away in less than a month. While I’m excited for new opportunities, I’m devastated to leave my current home, friends, and garden. We choose not to grow tomatoes this year, as it would be too hard to leave them behind, but the garden had other plans. Early in the summer, we noticed a lone tomato plant rising near a patch of thyme and oregano, and I want to believe this is a sign. That as I prepare to leave, the tomatoes from this determined plant mark my summer and ensure that I will remember everything I need to remember. It feels like a gift. A fitting, tender bookend.

I was inspired to find the recipe I’m sharing here by the Bridges Restaurant and their incredible tomato garnish. While I might be timid in the kitchen, once I eat something that changes me, I want to try it at home for that something delicious. Shortly after we returned for our trip, I googled “tomatoes” and “balsamic vinegar” and found this very simple, sensuous recipe on eHow.com under “How to Make Summer Tomato and Red Onion Salad.” Uncluttered and confident, it will make you believe, too.

Ingredients:

Instructions:

1. Cut tomatoes in comfortable, bit-sized pieces, quarters, eighths, halves, depending on the tomatoes, and place in a large mixing bowl.
2. Peel and core the onion. Slice it into very, very thin strips. As thin as you can! Add to tomatoes.
3. Cut basil leaves into thin strips and add to bowl.
4. Drizzle the olive oil and vinegar over the salad, season with salt and pepper, and toss well.

Note: This salad is best if it has time to marinate for about an hour before serving, though this isn’t necessary. If you have lower quality tomatoes, marinate longer.

Kristin Abraham is not typically a food writer, though she spends much of her life cooking and appreciating good food, and considers herself to be a “foodie.”  She is the author of two poetry chapbooks:  Little Red Riding Hood Missed the Bus (Subito Press, 2008), and Orange Reminds You of Listening (Elixir Press, 2006).  Additional poetry, critical essays and lyric essays appear in such places as Columbia Poetry Review, H_NGM_N, LIT, Copper Nickel, and Court Green.  She lives in Fort Collins, CO, with her husband—a fiction writer, and teaches English at LCCC in Cheyenne, WY.

As someone who enjoys nearly every kind of cuisine, I’m ashamed to admit that I’m not always a big fan of tomatoes, especially if they are raw.  There are occasions when a perfectly fresh, ripe red tomato in my salad or sandwich is overpoweringly acidic enough to make me remove the offender from my food; at times I revert to childlike behavior and pick them from my tacos or eat around them in salads.

It’s often embarrassing for me at restaurants and when visiting friends’ homes for dinner because I don’t want to leave untouched food on my plate and offend the cook who has put together a meal of balanced, complementary flavors; the sight of a meal with roasted whole or sliced raw tomatoes with salt-and-pepper seasoning have actually put me into minor panic.  The panic returns when I find myself at the farmer’s market, searching for excuses to not accept the juicy slice of heirloom tomato a vendor has just pared off for me; I may want the tomato to cook with, I may want to admire its visual beauty, but there’s no way I want to taste it here, like this—at the same time, I don’t want to seem rude and not eat something that I do have much appreciation for.

It seems almost contradictory for a foodie to have an aversion to tomatoes, let alone to have this aversion while choosing to grow the fruit in her garden, yet here I am.  At least I can be proud to say I haven’t let my palate stop me; through the years I’ve experimented with varieties and recipes, continuing to challenge myself with the tomato, and my taste buds and I have come along in leaps and bounds.  But I hadn’t really conquered my problem until about five years ago when, while shopping for my novice garden, I came across a tomato plant called “Lemon Boy.”

I took a shot and bought one Lemon Boy plant and was in love after eating its first fruit:  this was, at last, the tomato for the person who never really thought  s/he was a “tomato person”—if you’re one of them, I’ll take a chance and say you’re probably like I was and just haven’t yet found the right one; you may want to give these gentle yellow guys a chance.

Lemon Boy.  Golden Bison.  Pear.  Fargo. Brandywine.  Banana Legs.  Cuban Yellow Grape.  Lemon Cherry.  Ildi.  Goldie.  Maynel (“many moons”).  Aunt Gertie’s Gold.  Limmony.  Yellow Oxheart.  Gold Nugget.  Yellow Canary.  Yellow Stuffer.

Much more romantic than the generic description “yellow tomato.”  Here, they sound like names from a fairytale.  Or maybe a Disney movie:  the huntsman cuts out a yellow oxheart and dupes the wicked queen into thinking he killed Snow White; Nemo finds a new friend in Limmony, etc.  Stories can be inspired simply by the names and colors of some yellow tomatoes, but the real enchantment emanates from their appearance and flavors.

The yellow tomato category covers a broad spectrum, ranging from creamy, nearly-white colors to bright, sunny colors, some even closer to orange than yellow.  All of these guys (as well as orange tomatoes) are less acidic and a bit sweeter than a traditional “red” tomato, which I find makes them a lighter  and much more versatile ingredient; in fact, when they’re in season, I only use yellow tomatoes in my recipes.  They can be used in staple savory tomato dishes such as marinara, gazpacho, salsa, etc., but they’re also quite delectable in surprising sweeter combinations:  marmalade, fruit salads and mincemeat, to name a few.

My favorite use of yellow tomatoes is in a simple white grilled cheese sandwich (with some flair).  This recipe is just as easy to make as any grilled cheese, so I won’t waste time telling you how to make a grilled cheese, but here’s what I put into mine (all items to taste): havarti and fontina cheeses; Dr. Wyche’s Yellow or Garden Peach (a bit sweeter than the typical beefsteak yellow, and bearing real peach fuzz!) tomatoes; torn fresh basil leaves; drizzle of leatherwood honey.  Sometimes I add a slice or two of bacon or prosciutto.

As someone who had never been a big tomato fan, I can finally, thoroughly, enjoy tomatoes without being tempted to douse them in other flavors or sauces in order to tame their acidity.  When I cook with yellows I find I am able to cook simpler dishes (salt-and-pepper roasted, for instance) and at last appreciate what—I think—makes the “real” tomato lovers swoon:  their acidity, their sweetness, their versatility; how they crunch and juice; their vibrancy and shine.  I can finally eat raw tomatoes on my salads and enjoy thick slices on sandwiches.  Because of yellow tomatoes, I can honestly say that I am, indeed, a tomato lover, and I can be a proud “foodie” once again.

***

After I started this essay, I noticed yellow tomatoes slowly beginning to creep into the market where I buy our produce; it’s not quite tomato season in Iowa, so I know they’d been shipped in, but all of the writing and fantasizing about yellow tomatoes created an anticipation that was much too difficult to bear:  I purchased a pint of Galina’s [sic] (yellow cherry tomatoes) and headed home to throw together some fresh yellow personal creation, which I named Sun and Pepper Penne.  It’s nothing new, just a simple pasta dish, but it’s quick to make, light and fresh for summer, and can be eaten hot or cold, or at room temperature.  I make it as a main dish, no need for any sides, but it can be served with a salad or as a side to a meat dish.

This recipe—of course—can be used with any kind of tomato, but I hope you’ll consider celebrating yellows with me, especially if you never thought yourself a tomato-fancier before.

Sun and Pepper Penne

Ingredients

Directions

Cook pasta according to package directions; drain and keep warm.

Meanwhile, put oil and garlic into unheated, large sauté pan; turn burner to medium-high and slowly cook garlic in oil until golden (about 3 min.).

Sauté roasted red pepper in garlic and oil 1- 1 ½ min., stirring frequently. Reduce heat to medium-low.

Add cooked pasta and tomatoes to garlic and red pepper; cook and stir 2-3 min., until tomatoes are warmed but not bursting.  Stir in mozzarella, basil, pine nuts, and salt and pepper; toss to mix thoroughly.