“It took me all my life to learn how to salt a tomato.” ~Eric Ripert
While I’ve been adding salt to tomatoes since kindergarten (true story…my dad would sometimes pack a juicy tomato in my lunchbox, and would always include a little bit of salt), I understand what Chef Ripert means. Tomatoes are fairly simple, but also kind of complicated. Because, during certain times of the year, it’s not always easy to find a perfect one. And when you do find one, they don’t always need salt, or anything for that matter, but sometimes they do and should be added to that special dish along with garlic and basil and cheese. Lucky for me, it’s summer in Texas. Which means it’s really hot outside, and also that the tomatoes are just about perfect.
For whatever dish you might want to add them to.
If you follow Elda Eats on Instagram, you already know I’ve been splurging on beautiful tomatoes all summer, but last week I may have gotten the most perfect batch yet! I made wonderful sandwiches, baked them in the oven for a warm caprese salad, added them to tacos, had them for breakfast with my eggs, ate them – you guessed it – with just a little added salt, and then there was the galette.
I had seen probably four or five posts where people all over food-blog-land were making or had made a savory tomato galette. So, I thought, why not make one myself.
And so I did. Saturday night found me in the kitchen assembling some dough, lining up the good olive oil, salt, pepper and fresh crushed garlic, pulling together cheese – mozzarella, parmigiano reggiano, and pecorino romano, cutting some of the fresh herbs from my windowsill pots – oregano and basil, perusing the bottom drawer of the fridge for pepperoni, and saving my favorite whole milk ricotta for just when the galette came out of the warm oven and was ready to be eaten. That memory alone makes me want to make another one right now!
Oh, did I not mention the tomatoes? All they needed was for me to cut them in half and then place them perfectly in the dough so they would brown and caramelize and add their savory sweetness to what I was hoping would be a great meal.
It was indeed a great meal. It was in fact the best thing I ate last week.
See you next week!
Long live summer tomatoes! With or without salt.
Elda Eats XO
#eldaeats #eldaeatseverywhere #eatallthethings #eldaeatstomatoes #eatallthetomatoes
