You Say Tomato, I Say Tomato…with Herbs & Almond Vinaigrette

“The difference between a bland tomato and great one is immense…” ~Yotam Ottolenghi

Even in the short time this blog and its social media accounts have existed, I have written about my love for tomatoes, so it should come as no surprise that I agree with Chef Ottolenghi.

A good tomato can be eaten with almost anything, I think, while a bland or bad tomato, makes me kinda sad. And a great tomato? Well, sometimes nothing beats a great tomato, and a great tomato recipe was what I was hoping for with my attempt at the next best-ever recipe from Food & Wine Magazine’s Cook the 40 Challenge list.

Cook the 40

Why take on Food & Wine’s best-ever recipes from their forty years in publication? Because if you’ve been reading my blog posts and following me on social media, you know that’s one of the things I’m doing this year.

Besides, I’m also hoping that taking on these 40 recipes will add some fun and new favorite foods to my life. If even half of them end up being tasty, this will be a very worthwhile endeavor.

40 Years of Food & Wine

According to the September 2018 anniversary issue of Food & Wine, and editor Hunter Lewis, https://twitter.com/notesfromacook?lang=en, what makes a good recipe is it being delicious, of course, and (I think even more important sometimes) the best recipes “tell a story worth repeating.” Well said, Mr. Lewis.

I am not exactly sure what kind of stories all of these 40 best-ever recipes will tell from my kitchen’s point of view, but I am excited to find out.

Up next? Food & Wine’s recipe choice from 2016: Dan Kluger’s Tomatoes with Herbs and Almond Vinaigrette. Tomatoes in the title, and as the recipe’s star, made it almost a guarantee that I would love it. Almond vinaigrette? When I read that, well I was definitely intrigued.

The Sixth Recipe

While this recipe was pretty easy to make, it did call for heirloom tomatoes, which meant it would be a pretty special one to make, as I do love a good heirloom tomato. 

My first taste of heirloom tomatoes was probably about ten or so years ago when I worked at The St Anthony Hotel. Our chef, Cesar Gallegos, had just gotten a batch from a local farm and he had some of the management team try them. They were so good and ripe! He had cut them up into square chunks and I remember wanting more after the tasting was done. 

It only took one taste for me to fall in love with the strangely-shaped and somewhat unattractive tomatoes. To this day, a good heirloom tomato reminds me of my friend, Cesar. And of course, when they are good and ripe, I always want more.

Where Was I When This Recipe Was Published in 2016?

If you’re following me along this “Cook the 40” journey, you already know that besides cooking each recipe, I am also including where I was and/or where I went the year each recipe was published in the magazine, and perhaps a story or two about the recipe, the food or me. After all, I have been alive for the last 40 years, so why not include something about me when writing about each recipe, the year it was published, and any relationship I may have with said food or recipe.

2016 was a year of great traveling and eating, and also a year for new chapters. 

A New Home

The year started out with a move to a new home. Peter and I bought a newly built townhouse in the city, close to downtown San Antonio. I started off the year excited about a fresh start but also somewhat sad as my dad had been gone only less than a year, and it was a home he’d never visit.

More than a year before, we had sold a big house we had built, so many of our things had been packed for a while and in storage. Packing and unpacking boxes, and sorting through my belongings meant coming across so many photos, mementos and letters from my dad. It was bittersweet, as his death was not far enough away for me to be that comfortably close to so many of the memories I was unpacking.

Our new house would be the first place I lived that my dad would never know. He would never visit this house, or have coffee in the kitchen with Peter; he wouldn’t amusingly complain about the two flights of stairs, or tell us about the time he took classes at nearby San Antonio College. He would, however, be with me in sprit as I took my second comadres international vacation that year (with some of my best friends in high school). My dad had loved following us along in Italy two years before, so I knew he would have been excited for the three-country adventure we had planned for July.

We also had—and still have— plenty of my dad’s coffee mugs in the kitchen cabinets of our new home. His presence is always near.

London, Paris and Amsterdam, Oh My!

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I don’t know if I had great tomatoes during our European vacation in 2016, but I’m sure I did. European hotels with breakfast included in the rate typically have great tomatoes alongside the croissants and varieties of meat and cheese. I love that!

Tomatoes aside, I did eat very well as we traveled through London, Paris and Amsterdam that summer.

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More About Tomatoes & Me

If It Has Seeds, It’s a Fruit

I have always loved tomatoes. They have always been, and are to this day, my favorite fruit. And my favorite vegetable, if you want to be that way. 

Sorry, but my dad taught me that if it has seeds, it’s a fruit, and he often reminded me of this fact. (My dad liked facts, and he liked reminding me of facts.)

My Snoopy Lunchbox

Back in 1975-76 in kindergarten, in Laredo, Texas, I took my lunch to school every day. I had one of those 70’s Snoopy metal lunchboxes that came with a thermos and that little hook to keep the thermos in place. The thermos had a red lid, which I would use as a cup, to drink the cold milk my mom would make sure I always had; although I remember a few times where my thermos would be filled with chicken noodle soup instead (Campbell’s Soup, of course).

Besides my thermos, my lunch box would usually include a sandwich, and an apple and maybe a Little Debbie snack cake of some sort. I rarely got potato chips but sometimes I got crackers or a hard-boiled egg (I have always loved hard-boiled eggs!) Sometimes my mom would include one of her homemade chocolate chip cookies, or maybe a peanut butter cookie. It was always fun to open up my lunchbox to see what I’d be eating.

If my dad packed my lunchbox, it may have included a taco instead of a sandwich. The taco would be somewhat cold by the time the bell at Leon Daiches Elementary rang for lunch, but I can still remember how the smashed taco filled with refried beans, or potatoes and egg tasted. The thick homemade flour tortilla held up well, even cold, and was the perfect texture difference for whatever the cold, greasy (and I mean that in a good way) filling was. If you ever ate homemade tacos wrapped in aluminum foil “to go” as a kid, I think you know what I’m trying to describe. Never tried a cold homemade taco this way? Give it a go.

With or Without Salt

My dad would sometimes put a whole tomato in my lunch box, too. I don’t remember where it came from, but I would sometimes add some salt after each bite. Maybe my teacher, Miss Rathmell, had a salt shaker at her desk. Or maybe my dad somehow sent the salt in my lunchbox. I wish I remembered. 

We ate tomatoes like that all the time at home. Whole, or cut into wedges or slices, sometimes with salt, sometimes without. Back then I didn’t eat avocados but my dad and my brothers did and so my dad would slice an avocado to fill a tortilla (or a slice of white bread) along with a nicely ripened slice or two of red tomato. My taco—or half sandwich—however, would be just tomato and salt, sin aguacate.

Always Wanting More

These are not my only good memories of tomatoes from childhood, but whenever I eat a good tomato this way, I think of my dad in the kitchen, cutting a tomato, proclaiming it good or great or not just by looking at it, and then tasting it to be sure. He’d put the tomato slices in our bread or tortilla, and give us our taco or sandwich just like that, no plate or napkin. I’m sure when we were done, we’d wipe our mouths or hands on the sleeves of our shirt, hoping we’d get some more.

Elda XO

For more information about this recipe, click here to be taken to the Food & Wine link: https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/pan-roasted-salmon-tomato-vinaigrette

Thank you to Chef Dan Kluger for the recipe and for inspiring me to write about great tomatoes. https://www.instagram.com/dan_kluger/?hl=en