September 1999

TOMATOES

In most places I know, September is the beginning of cooler weather. It calls up images from my childhood in Michigan, of leaves beginning to turn. I remember the crisp air. You could think again.

But in southern California, September is the tough month. The temperature can hit 110°. Children go back to school and faint in their classrooms. In an unlucky year, it can be the month of brush fires, whipped by scorching, dry Santa Ana winds.

In better times, it's just the hottest month of the year, and a chance to eat a few more meals outside. The reward for the heat is in gleaming purple mounds of eggplants at the market, melons and berries that are explosively flavorful, and tomatoes that are at their reddest, sweetest best.

There is something especially wonderful about eating dinner outside in the waning days of September. Darkness comes sooner. We feel summer slipping away, feel ourselves being pulled toward those shorter, more industrious days, and that gives the warm evenings a special magic.

On nights like those, I want a robustly flavored pasta dinner, with a nice bottle of Chianti, and a platter of cold, sweet fruit for dessert. And I want tomatoes - lots of them. I want them raw and I want them cooked. They are the essential flavor of late summer. I fill my plate with them daily, and put them in jars for the winter.

One of my favorite ways to cook tomatoes is to roast them in the oven. Oven-roasted tomatoes are a tomato lover's dream, dark and rich with concentrated flavor. I've been making them for years, and there's a recipe for Roasted Tomato Sauce in The New Vegetarian Epicure (p.192).

I use different methods, sometimes slow roasting, sometimes a fast blast in a hot oven, scorching the edges, but it always amounts to this: cut the tomatoes in halves or quarters, lay them skin-side down on an oiled baking sheet, spray them with some olive oil, sprinkle them with salt, and put them in the oven. At 350° they'll take about an hour. At 400°, closer to forty minutes or half an hour. At 250°, several hours. But it's not much work - just take them out when they're done. Then you can scoop them off their skins, or leave the skins on if you don't care.

I put roasted tomatoes into a bowl and keep them in the refrigerator. I spoon them on toast instead of jam when I want a savory breakfast. They improve almost any sandwich, and are particularly good spread over cream cheese or yogurt cheese. And they are a marvel with pasta.

At least half a dozen times this summer I've made pasta with roasted tomatoes, garlic, feta cheese, kalamata olives, and oregano - it's my teenage son's favorite. Another great combination is pasta with roasted tomatoes, grilled eggplant, and smoked cheese - this month's new recipe.

So - here is my perfect menu for the last warm nights of summer, the September dinner on the terrace:

If you don't have a bowl of roasted tomatoes waiting in the fridge, they can be done in the morning while it is cool. The grilling of the eggplant slices is a quick affair - and grill some extra while you're at it, because they are wonderful as a salad, marinated in a bit of olive oil and vinegar. The dessert is effortless.

Then it's only a matter of opening that Chianti and setting the table outside. You can enjoy summer a little longer - stretch it by a few days or weeks, savoring the feast of tomatoes.

September 1999 recipe