By Joelle Abramowitz
Purchase your tomatoes at any local farmer’s market or harvest from your backyard!
This month’s seasonal recipe is for tomato toast. In-season local tomatoes are the perfect balance of sweet, acidic, and umami flavors, a completely different experience from their out-of-season counterparts. While tomatoes originated in South America, they were brought to Spain and then Italy in the 1500s, subsequently spreading throughout the Mediterranean, where they were incorporated into the cuisines of Sephardim in Turkey and Greece and the Italian Jews, and, much later, among Ashkenazim. In-season local tomatoes do not need much to enhance their flavor, but pairing them with ingredients that highlight their natural qualities yields an even tastier experience. After much experimentation, I have developed my ultimate tomato sandwich, including, in addition to thick slices of peak tomatoes, toasted good-quality bread for crunch and stability, good-quality mayonnaise for richness, and flaky salt for texture and to make the flavors pop.
Tomato Toast (aka Perfection on a Plate)
Serves 1
Pareve
Ingredients
Two slices of crusty bread, toasted
Garlic clove, sliced in half lengthwise to maximize cut surface area
Good quality mayonnaise
1 large or 2 small peak season tomato(es)
Flaky salt, to taste
Preparation
Toast bread slices. Immediately after toasting, rub the bread with the cut sides of the garlic clove. Spread each bread slice with an ample layer of mayonnaise. Top with tomato slices and flaky salt.
Dr. Joelle Abramowitz writes a monthly Substack newsletter, the Gastronomist Economist, and has written about Jewish food for the Detroit Jewish News, jew-ish.com, and The Forward, among other outlets. Originally from New Jersey, Joelle now considers herself a Michigander, after living in Ann Arbor for the last ten years. When she is not in the kitchen or writing about it, she daylights as research faculty studying health and labor economics at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.