"Ed reveals his “secret” of dealing with too-ripe tomatoes. — M.B.
Corey Ramey’s post “Living Without Abundant Tomatoes” didn’t take account of one fact of summertime life: on occasion, even a single tomato can be an overabundance.
I’m thinking of a recent Wednesday, when I bought a particularly ripe purplish one at our local Greenmarket, ripe enough that by the time it had sat around in my office all day and then made the perilous trip home it had cracked and begun to bleed, or ooze, or whatever carelessly handled ripe tomatoes do.
It needed to be used right away, obviously, and there was no immediate place for it in our lives. For reasons uninteresting to anyone but my wife, Jackie, and me, the dining program that night was centered on meatloaf. Or rather, it was meatloaf. I could have pureed the tomato and added it to the pork and beef mixture before baking, but it deserved better than that. So, instead of bothering to make even the simplest of gravies, I diced the wounded tomato, skin and seeds included, scooped it into a bowl, generously salted and peppered it and splashed it with olive oil – no lemon, no vinegar, no herbs: this was not to be a so-called tomato vinaigrette.
What it was to be was just seasoned chopped tomatoes, and I can tell you that spooned, juice and all, over thick slabs of tepid meatloaf (why would anyone eat it hot?) it was delicious and evocative. Evocative, oddly, of something I ate maybe two decades ago in a Greenwich Village restaurant: a breaded veal cutlet topped with similar, though less finely diced, tomatoes. This is not an uncommon thing, but to me it sounded at the time like a lousy idea (it would be bland; it would make the crust soggy), but … well, the fact that I think of it to this day must mean that somebody there had something on the ball.
So if you manhandle a tomato or two (or are fortunate enough to have a genuine overabundance), think of that affinity. As a partner for meat, tomatoes will never replace potatoes, but when they’re as good as they can be at this time of year they certainly hold their own."
