Olive Me

Forget about butter and jam on your morning toast (and maybe all that pre-dinner double-dipping of bread in olive oil, too). The Catalans have a better idea: pa amb tomàquet, bread with tomato.  Add a smidge of garlic, olive oil, and salt, plus a slice of protein — sheep’s milk cheese or dry cured ham — and you’ve got a complete breakfast.

Pa amb tomàquet is like biscuits and gravy:  a perfect pairing that got its start down on the farm, but has since made its way to big city tables.  Here in the New World it is found on “tapas” menus and recipe pages described as a Catalan specialty but given a new name based on a translation, inexplicably, not into English but into Spanish:  “Pan con Tomate.”  Whatever you call it, it is just about the most scrumptious thing you can do with a late summer tomato.  And there’s nothing to it.  Just don’t go about it the way Melissa Clark did in the New York Times a couple of years ago:  Rubbing the toast with tomato after drizzling on the olive oil will not do — you need the crusty toasty surface to act as a sort of grater for grabbing the garlic and the tomato and you want the olive oil to dress the top juicily.  Here’s the proper order of business:

Oh, wait.  Did I say there’s nothing to it?  There is one challenge to getting this “recipe” right.  It’s the ingredients.  With something this simple, the flavor of each element matters exquisitely.  The bread should be real bread, a rustic round or a ciabatta, substantial, crusty, hole-y.  The salt should be sea salt or kosher salt with a nice crunchy texture, but not that great big coarse stuff.  And the tomatoes should be the small, juicy, thin-skinned kind — this year, after a summer without tomatoes, the fall ones here seem just perfect.  In Catalunya when the last late fall tomatoes ripen, people pull the whole plant out of the ground and hang it upside down in a cool, dark pantry or attic.  And here’s my kind of transubstantiation:  The tomatoes last deep into winter this way, their flavors concentrating to perfection.

Once you’ve gathered these few good ingredients, here’s what you do:

Pa amb Tomàquet

Serves 4

For four people, toast four big slabs of bread or eight smaller pieces.  If you happen to be grilling, toast your bread on the grill, but the oven or broiler or ordinary toaster will do.  Do both sides, why not?  Meanwhile, cut a couple of garlic cloves in half crosswise, and do the same to four ripe little tomatoes.  Have your pitcher of olive oil and bowl of salt at the ready.  Let people gather around and do up their own:  first rub the hot toasts lightly with the flat side of the garlic — don’t be compelled to use the whole piece, a little goes a long way; next rub the tomato halves onto the toast, gently squeezing so the pulp mashes onto the toast  — do be compelled to use lots in this case; then drizzle with olive oil; sprinkle with salt.

Pa amb Tomàquet

A fancier version

Here’s a tidy make-ahead version that works well for a big party or one that doesn’t invite the do-it-yourself scene described above.  To prep the tomatoes ahead of time, I use a great Catalan cooking trick:  halve them and grate the pulp — yes, just press the halves, pulp side down, along the big holes of a plain old grater, catching the juice and pulp in a bowl.  Just before serving, cut a ciabatta in half crosswise, expose its hole-y bellies to the grill or toaster, and when it’s toasty, scrape on the garlic, lightly.  Now you can spoon on the tomato neatly and quickly, drizzle the whole show with oil, sprinkle with salt, whack into pieces like a pizza, and bring the whole thing to the table on a platter.