The Heirlooms are coming! The Heirlooms are coming!

You’ll have to excuse my rather pathetic imitation/adaptation of Paul Revere’s famous warning of 1775. It’s just that juicy, fragrant, lucious tomatoes really do excite me and their arrival always triggers a flood of the most pleasant memories. At the age of six or seven I picked plum tomatoes in our neighbors garden (with permission of course). Still warm from the sun with a sprinkling of salt they were like candy.

I remember the first time I tasted aged provolone cheese at an Italian classmate’s house. The cheese was accompanied by a thick slab of freshly picked beefsteak tomato. My memories of canning tomatoes and making chili sauce in late summer no longer induce thoughts of how much work it was. Even the peculiar acid tinged aroma of the tomato vine sets off nostalgic mental meanderings.

There are many ways to revel in the great variety of heirloom tomatoes available to us with their colorful names like mortgage lifter, green zebra and black Russian. Salt, freshly ground black pepper and a little mayonnaise do the job nicely. The American Classic BLT combing salty bacon, cool lettuce and the acid bite of fresh tomato is almost a summer necessity. When I was a kid we liked to take a freshly made grilled cheese sandwich, pull the two sides apart and quickly slide into the sandwich a thick slice of fresh tomato. Of course you could add the tomato before grilling the sandwich but the resulting product doesn’t taste as good as adding the tomato after grilling.

One of my favorite tomato stories comes from a wine tasting trip I made to Spain in the late 1980's. There were eight of us all in some way connected with food and wine media traveling with a representative of the Wines of Spain marketing agency. We were invited to join the Chairman of the Board of wine producer Codorniu in Spain’s Penedes region from which the sparkling wine known as cava comes. We were seated at a large communal table in a restored 1930's villa which had once housed dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Waiting for the first course to be served we were of course peppering our host with questions about the Spanish wine industry. He affably answered our questions. As he did I noticed that he had taken a large red ripe tomato from a basket of them in the center of the table. As he talked he cut the tomato in half horizontally and then took a large slice of crusty country bread from another basket. He almost absentmindedly began rubbing the bread with the cut side of one of the tomato halves. After a layer of tomato juice and bits of tomato flesh covered the bread, he sprinkle it with a little salt, drizzled it with some olive oil and began to eat it as several of us asked almost in unison what he was doing. Gleefully he introduced us to the Catalan speciality pa amb tomaquet. We forgot about the wine for a moment as we eagerly copied his behavior with delicious results. If you want you can also rub the bread slice with the cut side of a peeled garlic clove before the tomato.

Here is one of my favorite recipes using fresh tomatoes. It comes from Zoe Sanders who wrote the book Entertaining at the College of Charleston.

At its writing she was the wife of the President of the College of Charleston in South Carolina. This simple recipe delivers excellent results and invites experimentation. You can easily vary the taste of the finished product by using a different type of cheese or a combination of cheeses. You can also use different herbs. If you are terrified at the thought of making pie crust or time is an issue simply use a good quality store bought frozen pie shell and follow package directions for baking.

These pies can be served warm (preferable) or at room temperature. The resulting pie is somewhat like a quiche and always gets rave reviews.

SUMMER TOMATO PIE

Two nine or ten inch pre-baked pie shells
1 and ½ pounds of ripe tomatoes
½ teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

6 tablespoons of chopped fresh basil or two tablespoons of dried basil

1 cup of chopped yellow onion

3 cups of grated sharp cheddar cheese

1 cup mayonnaise

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Combine grated cheese and mayonnaise in a bowl.

Dip tomatoes in boiling water for one minute and peel, one at a time. Cut into one half inch thick slices removing seeds if you wish. Drain on paper towels.

Divide the ingredients putting half in each pie shell in this order: first a layer of tomatoes using all slices, sprinkle the tomato layer with the salt, pepper and basil. Next sprinkle on a layer of chopped onion using all of the onion, then add the cheese mixture covering the contents of the pie loosely but completely. Do not push the cheese layer down.

Bake the pies in the preheated oven for thirty or thirty-five minutes until the cheese is bubbly and beginning to brown. Cool on a rack for twenty or twenty five minutes before cutting. Store leftovers (if there are any) in the refrigerator.

The above becomes a Winter Tomato Pie by substituting two 28 ounce cans of whole tomatoes drained and chopped for the fresh.