How to eat all the tomatoes

What’s on your make-every-year list?

A bit of housekeeping: I’m thrilled to say that The Dinner Plan Podcast is coming soon, and your regular Saturday morning newsletter will be full of inspiration from an expert guest. You’ll peek inside their fridge, you’ll get their must-cook-again recipe favorites and cookbook recommendations, and hear how they find their way back to the kitchen when dinner feels relentless.

But as I spin up the show, I wanted to introduce you to a few more elements of this free newsletter—especially since tomatoes and corn and plums are (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) the best they’re gonna be for awhile. So you can expect some produce-themed newsletters—we’ll call them The Recipe Files—over the next few weeks. I hope they’re packed with the cooking ideas you really need exactly now.

But more importantly, I hope you chime in on the thread with your personal favorites.

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I try to acquire only as much produce as I have a plan for, but the one certainty in life is that life is uncertain. A dinner party gets cancelled when the guest has a fever. A friend grew a bumper crop and shows up with more. The heart falls in love—oops!—at the farmers market and forgets that thing about planning.

This is (with apologies to Elizabeth Bishop) no disaster.

There are BLTs and pan con tomate, Caprese and panzanella, tomato-egg stir fry and shakshuka. There is, after all, toast—and pasta with no-cook tomato sauce or Marcella Hazan’s famous sauce with butter. I’ve also got my eye on

Alexis deBoschnek

’s gorgeous Niçoise.

But if you have made all of those dishes and aren’t feeling inspired by the thought of another round—or if you, like me, haven’t gotten your fill of tomatoes yet and need to remedy that asap before the season shifts, I hope these ideas can spark something.

• Yotam Ottolenghi’s Hot, Charred Cherry Tomatoes With Cold Yogurt (from Ottolenghi Simple)

• Francis Lam’s Weapons-Grade Ratatouille (Splendid Table)

• Meera Sodha’s Tomato Curry (The Guardian)

• Hailee Catalano’s Slow-Roasted Salmon With Tomatoes, Chile, and Vinegar

• Tejal Rao’s Paneer con Tomate (New York Times)

• Dan Pashman’s Raw Heirloom Puttanesca With Fish Sauce and Calabrian Chili (excerpted from Anything’s Pastable, on

  emily nunn
  ’s The Department of Salad)

• Zaynab Issa’s Curried Tomato Sandwich (Bon Appétit)

• Caroline Chambers’s Tomato Farrotto (from

  Caroline Chambers
  of What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking)

• Kendra Vaculin’s Grated Tomato and Miso Butter Pasta (Bon Appétit)

• J. Kenji López-Alt’s Zucchini and Roasted Tomatoes With Pasta and Dried Olive Flavor Shake (Serious Eats)

• Emma Hearst’s Tomatoes With Brown Butter (excerpted from Flavors from the Farm, on Epicurious)

• Paris Starn’s Corn, Nduja, Basil, and (Sungold) Tomato Pasta (

  playing with food
  )

• Jeanine Donofrio’s Eggplant Caponata with a pound of tomatoes… (Love and Lemons)

• Sabrina Ghayour’s Tomato Salad With Pomegranate Molasses (The Observer)

• Meredith Hayden’s Grilled Chicken Parm (Wishbone Kitchen)

I also can’t get the idea of the (sweet!) tomato and plum crumble with lemon-thyme and coriander seeds in

Mark Diacono

’s book, Vegetables, out of my mind.

To drink, there’s always this alcohol-free cocktail, which starts with tomato water and absolutely does not require gin to be delicious.

I’ll leave you with one other note I received, from Andrew: “A chef once served me a perfectly sliced tomato with vanilla-infused olive oil and giant chunks of fleur de sel with nothing else.”

At Margot in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, they’re serving heirloom tomatoes with Sungold tomato caramel. Do with these tidbits what you will.

We’re really here for the thread, though. Please leave a comment or reply to this email: What’s on your make-every-year tomato recipe list?

Thank you thank you to Sonia, Alaina, Elianna, Ariel, Alex, Sarah, Jenna, and Megan for sharing a few of these tomato ideas. Book links are affiliate links.