Tomatoes are finally in season, so now what do I do? 🍅
Five recipe ideas + a cocktail rec
Hi hangries! 🍅 Yes, it’s here — the long-awaited annual tomato edition of the newsletter. One thing that everybody knows is that summer tomatoes are delicious. Summer tomatoes are so good, in fact, that they can convert the tomato apathetic, the tomato indifferent, the tomato resistant, and even the tomato averse. Maybe you get them from your local farmer’s market; maybe you grow your own. If you’re lucky like me, your dad grows some of the best tomatoes you’ll ever eat in his backyard. You can read more of that in my very first newsletter. No matter where you get your summer tomatoes, it is a proven fact that they are in a league of their own, far superior to the ones you can find at other times of the year.
When tomatoes are at their peak, there are few better ways to enjoy them than slicing them thick, seasoning with salt and pepper, and putting them on a piece of toast generously smeared with butter or mayo. However, when they’re in abundance, sometimes you’re looking for more ways to eat them. Or maybe you bought too many at the market and want to make sure you enjoy them before they go bad.
Before we get into it, I want to share a cute get-together I organized on Sunday with some friends where we did a bake-along and all made a blackberry cobbler together over Zoom. I walked us through making Hailee Catalano’s recipe — a tried and true summer classic — and we had the best time. We subbed out the tarragon for a little lemon zest and juice to make it little more traditional. Some girls did different fruit variations like nectarines and blackberries, blueberries and blackberries, and plums and blueberries. We shared life updates while mixing together cobbler dough with plenty of giggles along the way. I highly recommend this cobbler recipe and baking with friends, even if it has to be over Zoom!
Five ways to enjoy your peak season tomatoes
1. Miso brown-butter tomato galette
Clearly I’ve been loving making galettes this summer (exhibit a, b, and c). Galettes have all the joy of a pie or tart with a little less hassle and permission to be a bit more rustic. Earlier in the summer, I made a more classic heirloom tomato galette with pesto and burrata. It was delicious and felt like having a pastry version of a pizza slice. Recently I made Carla Lalli Music’s miso-brown butter tomato tart recipe, which pairs umami-rich tomatoes with Asian flavors like miso, sesame, soy sauce, and fish sauce. I made the tart a galette simply by not using a tart pan and using the dough as a freeform sheet, folding over the edges to tuck in all the juicy tomatoes and delicious sauces. I didn’t have miso on hand, but we had doenjang (miso’s saltier, funkier Korean cousin), which worked out very well. The key to making tomatoes’ flavors pop is adding salt, so using soy sauce and doenjang really allows the tomatoes in this galette to shine. The recipe is on her Substack, and you can watch her make it on YouTube below.
2. Dumpling tomato salad with chili crisp vinaigrette
While the galette is a bit more time and ingredient intensive, this dumpling tomato salad is shockingly simple and comes together quickly. Once again, the salty, umami flavors of soy, rice vinegar, and chili crisp give tomatoes a platform to shine in this very fun dish that can be a side or full meal depending on how many dumplings you make. Cutting the tomatoes into wedges the same size as the dumplings not only makes for pretty presentation but ensures you get a bite of sweet, juicy tomato with every bite of dumpling. My advice is to load it up on herbs — basil, if you have it, but cilantro would also be great. It’s best room temperature or even slightly warm, but I had chilled leftovers the next day, and it was delicious, almost reminiscent of pasta salad. Here’s the link to the NYT recipe.
3. Big summer salads
One of my favorite dinner recipes to make during the summer isn’t really a recipe. It’s throwing together whatever fresh vegetables and herbs I have together in a bowl and adding a simple dressing and some cheese, like grilled halloumi or feta. It’s the kind of salad you can fill most your plate with and stores well as leftovers for the next few days. These kinds of salads pair perfectly with some grilled meat or seafood. Depending on what I have on hand, I love doing some combination of cherry tomatoes, corn, green onion, cucumber, basil, and halloumi.
My favorite dressing to use for these salads, which pairs well with all its different versions is this lemony honey sumac vinaigrette. If you haven’t had it before, sumac is a bright red, lemony tasting seasoning from the Mediterranean. It can be hard to find, but I can get it at H Mart. This vinaigrette will be good without it — instead, I’d just add the zest from a full lemon.
Lemony honey sumac vinaigrette
Ingredients:
1/2 cup olive oil
4 garlic cloves
Zest of half lemon
Juice from a full lemon
1/2 Tbsp sumac
1 1/2 tsp honey
1 Tbsp sherry vinegar
Alternatively: Rice vinegar or apple cider vinegar would also work
Salt and pepper
Directions:
If using a food processor, add all ingredients in and pulse until well combined for about 30 seconds. Season to taste.
If not using a food processor, mince the garlic finely. Mix all ingredients except for the olive oil. Once combined thoroughly, slowly stream in the olive oil while whisking. Season to taste.
4. BLTs
I feel like I really don’t have to remind you why you should use summer tomatoes to make BLTs, but I’d also be remiss if I didn’t share with you some of favorite tips for making the best BLTs. When made with perfectly ripe tomatoes, BLTs will go down in my book as the best sandwich of all time. Once my dads tomatoes become plentiful, we eat a lot of BLTs — usually multiple in one sitting and sometimes more than one in a day.
I support whichever journey you decide to take with your BLT, but here’s how we do BLTs in my family.
Bacon: Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil, layer on the bacon, put in the cold oven, then preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Cook for 15-20 minutes until crispy.
Lettuce: Now is really not the time to get fancy, so pile on some iceberg lettuce.
Tomatoes: They should be layered on as thick as a hamburger patty. Salt the sliced tomatoes while you’re cooking the bacon, toasting the bread, washing the lettuce, and getting the other components ready.
Bread: It’s usually white bread. Something soft and slightly toasted.
Mayo: Duke’s, Kewpie, or Hellman’s — and layer it on liberally.
Cheese: We love to add a slice or two of American cheese. Pimiento cheese is a great addition too — I’m including Hailee Catalano’s recipe below for a delicious Calabrian chili pimiento cheese.
Calabrian chili pimiento cheese
Calabrian chili pimiento cheese
Recipe from Hailee Catalano
Ingredients:
1/2 cup mayo
1/2 pound shredded cheddar cheese
4 oz pimientos, chopped finely
2 Tbsp Calabrian chilis
1 clove of garlic, grated
Salt and pepper
Directions:
Mix all ingredients into a bowl and season to taste. (Watch how Hailee makes it in the TikTok below.)
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5. Pasta sauce
A simple pasta sauce made with fresh tomatoes is equally worthy of your perfectly plump tomatoes as it is of the slightly bruised ones that may not be as well suited for fresh salads. Wishbone Kitchen’s sungold tomato pasta recipe is a great base recipe for making pasta sauce with fresh tomatoes — she uses sungolds, but this recipe can be easily made with other cherry tomatoes or regular tomatoes too. I love her tip for slowly sautéing the shallots and garlic to bring out their sweetness before adding the tomatoes. The addition of a little butter at the end adds just enough to make it super creamy and emulsified. It reminds me of the pasta my dad would make my sister and I the night before swim meets growing up in the summer — using the golden sweet tomatoes from his garden, usually with whole wheat spaghetti, topped with lots of parmesan.
Bonus: Green tomato cocktail
My bonus content for DC-area readers is telling you about one of my favorite cocktails I’ve had in a long time — a green tomato and whey cocktail from Pascual, a new high-end Mexican restaurant on Capitol Hill. It’s called the “No Whey José” and just earned mention in a new Washington Post article about tomato cocktails in DC. I had the version with vodka, and Peter had the N/A version (I love when restaurants have N/A versions of the cocktails from their regular menu). The drink was surprisingly fruity, savory, and silky smooth. If you’re thinking Bloody Mary, it’s nothing like that. It’s more similar to a daiquiri or gimlet. I recommend reading the article about it to learn more about how the concept for the drink came about. Their bartender uses the kitchen’s byproduct from making cheese — the whey — and turn that into a simple syrup, combines it with green tomato juice-infused vodka, and topped with a little lemon juice. My recommendation: grab the No Whey José in either form at their bar and split a few plates to snack on.
Thank you for reading, subscribing, and continuing to follow along at @hangrytohappyy on Instagram and @hangrytohappy on TikTok! See you here next time! Xoxo 🍅
BLT’s Rule!!! So many yummy ideas.
So many happy memories associated with tomatoes! Oh, and those blt’s. Your dad’s tomatoes are the best!