This is Not Pan Con Tomate

but it's still sexy as hell

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Weird how my living room floor on a sunny day almost looks like Catalonia.

Hello to all my little night-shady characters!

This post is my second annual attempt to bring justice to those of you in the early tomato regions of the world! Always looking out! And for those of you/us who must wait several more weeks for a tomato worth gushing over, pin this recipe to the vision board.

My jumping off point was pan con tomate, in which a tomato is rubbed onto grilled bread—that’s it—and manages to be the best thing you’ve ever eaten in your life. In order for that method to work, you must first teleport to the northeast coast of Spain, where your next door neighbor is a tomato savant who you’ve spent the last 13 years befriending in anticipation of this very moment.

The dream. I was on that coast once many moons ago, and can attest: everything tastes better there. For those of us on the spectrum between typical summer fantasy and heightened European vacation delusion, I’ve come up with a path to pan con tomate (PCT) that takes the same amount of time as applying sunscreen to your face and picking out a caftan for the day. Easy!

Anyone who’s made my pasta with lobster fromWhere Cooking Begins or the Tomato Soup in the Style of Sauce from That Sounds So Good will be familiar with the tomato grating trick. Once you have your shreds, you’re going to season them with a little garlic and some sherry vinegar (keeping it in Spain). If your tomato is not peak-peak-peak-perfection, adding acidity, salt, and heat will help bump it up. If it’s a really sweet tomato, you might want a little more zing, which another dash of vinegar will do.

In the time it takes to griddle your toast, you’re going to fry up some capers with bay leaf (as seen in the video above), and finish that off with some smoky Pimentón de la Vera. Again—Spain, but any smoked paprika can be deployed.

The smoky chile adds dimension and heat to match how hot you look in your caftan. The capers add a briny note, which replicates the impact of mist from the Balearic Sea on our palates. The bay leaf was my son, Leo’s idea and it tasted excellent, in that “what even is the flavor of bay leaf” way. Let’s say it adds mystery and discovery, like going down a little side street even though there might not be anything there. You’ll still be glad you went.

The truly fantastic thing about my PCT, which is really more of a technique, is that you can adapt it to your summertime dream. Use basil instead of parsley and a dab of Calabrian chile paste instead of pimenton—boom, you’re in Palermo. Trade tarragon for the parsley and fry some anchovies in the oil instead of the capers, and it’s bonjour Provence. Take it to Marrakesh with mint, ras el hanout, and some torn olives. We are living out our fantasies here, people!

I know the 4th of July is supposed to be classic North America stuff, but I can’t be the only one who would rather be somewhere else. Wink wink.

xoCLM

P.S.

I pulled together the gear used to make this recipe—the same serrated knife and cutting board I have, a 4-sided grater, cast-iron griddle for the bread, little skillet for the capers, etc. Everything is linked here.

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The new, original, never-before-published recipe for This is Not Pan Con Tomate is posted below for paid subscribers to Food Processing. Thank you for supporting my work! This newsletter would not exist without you.