Waiting Is the Hardest Part

My patience is an anxious thing! I am waiting for the first tomato to ripen.

All summer, we watch the vines grow, tie them up, water their roots, pinch back unruly branches, and inspect the fruit each morning for the slightest blush of red. Now, at last, my tomatoes are beginning to ripen—and I can hardly wait.

My favorite sandwich in the whole wide world is a BLT made with a perfectly ripe tomato, still warm from the garden. I layer it with our own bacon, crisp lettuce, and plenty of mayonnaise on toasted gluten-free bread. We are lucky to have an amazing farm stand just down the road that makes delicious bread using New England-grown buckwheat. With ingredients this good, the sandwich needs nothing else.

A real garden tomato is worth waiting for. It is juicy, fragrant, slightly sweet, and completely unlike the tomatoes we settle for during the rest of the year. When tomatoes are this good, I try not to do too much to them.

Slice them and arrange them on a platter with warm corn kernels, chopped chives, good olive oil, sea salt, and freshly ground pepper. Serve them with fresh basil and a splash of vinegar. Spoon chopped tomatoes over grilled fish, fold them into an omelet, or pile them with a bit of garlic, cucumbers, herbs, and sweet onion to make lunch all by itself.

And please, do not refrigerate your garden tomatoes. Cold temperatures dull their flavor and change their beautiful texture. Keep them on the counter, out of direct sunlight, and eat them while they are ripe.

If the garden suddenly gives you more tomatoes than you can manage, slow-roast them. Cut small tomatoes in half or larger tomatoes into thick slices. Arrange them on a parchment-lined baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle lightly with salt, and place them in a 200°F oven for several hours, until their juices have concentrated and their edges are slightly dry. Their flavor becomes deep, sweet, and almost jammy.

Tuck the finished tomatoes into the refrigerator to enjoy during the week, or freeze them for later. They are wonderful stirred into soups, sauces, beans, pasta, or risotto—or simply in the middle of winter, when the memory of a warm summer tomato feels especially precious.

For now, though, I am still waiting. The tomatoes are almost ready. And perhaps that anticipation is part of what makes the first BLT of the summer taste so extraordinarily good.

and …finally, I’d love to welcome you into the next season of good food, real learning, and recipes made for a real kitchen. John Bagnulo and I have created a whole set of classes and retreats with scientific lectures and recipes—the kind you’ll actually cook in your home and serve again and again!

Upcoming Classes and Retreats

I’m sharing these with the birds! As soon as neetted these, the netting entangled two birds in the netting, and I was so upset—I cut the netting down, and now I am learning to share!