Classic Tomato Sandwich Recipe

When I was a kid, my mom would reminisce about her childhood in a small farming city on the Jap Shore of Maryland. One of the reminiscences she’d tell me about year following calendar year, in particular in the summertime when the tomatoes we would get in 1980s Brooklyn had been fantastic but not fantastic, was how there was very little like plucking a ripe tomato off the vine and taking in it out-of-hand like an apple appropriate there in the area, every chunk sprinkled with salt and nevertheless warm from the solar.

Only when I was more mature and flew off to Italy to operate on farms for a calendar year did I take care of to working experience the identical thing myself, last but not least being familiar with just how excellent a perfect tomato could be. In this article in the States, there could be no superior celebration of that perfection than the basic Southern tomato sandwich. Whilst it can be not quite as nominal a therapy as salt and sun-heat, it nevertheless holds restricted to the exact basic idea—that a wonderful tomato at the peak of its ripeness desires incredibly tiny. In this circumstance, it truly is just white sandwich bread, mayonnaise, and just sufficient salt and pepper to make it pop.

The preparing is so simple there is not considerably to explain. Definitely, this sandwich is only worth producing when tomatoes are at their absolute peak. Standard specimens picked whilst green, gassed to transform them a vague shade of orange-pink, and supposed to survive lots of days on a deliver shelf will not cut it. The bread won’t have to have to be nearly anything fancy, and even though a single could choose to toast it, it doesn’t actually want it: The softness and sweetness of simple white bread is just what you want to soak up tomato juices as they drip and combine with the mayo. As for the mayo, passions can run higher, even though Duke’s, a Southern model that is famously thick and creamy, is the one numerous swear by.

Essentially, provided how straightforward a tomato sandwich is, maybe the next time I come across myself in a area surrounded by tomato vines, I am going to be ready not just with salt, but some bread and mayo as very well.