Loading ...Mediterranean Cooking from the Garden with Linda Dalal Sawaya: Summer Love—Tomatoes
my father’s tomato salad © linda dalal sawaya 2015
With over seven thousand varieties of tomatoes: green, red, orange, yellow, purple, striped, and beyond, what a fabulous visual and lusciously tasting fruit we enjoy world wide. Cherry, pear, plum, and grape, are a few types of tomatoes named after other fruits. And even though technically it is a fruit, we eat it as a vegetable for its sweetness: raw in salads and salsas, in beverages, and chilled summer soups; a beautiful adornment as a garnish, and cooked in stews, sauces, casseroles, topping pizzas, and embedded into lasagnas; and since they arrive with abundance, we preserve them by canning, drying, freezing, and making sauces and purees. An irresistible fruit eaten fresh when it is vine-ripened and something almost inedible when it’s not in season.
Tomatoes are easy to grow, and are a prized home-garden staple either in the ground, hanging in baskets or in patio pots in gardens around the world. We may never have too many of these summer icons, and we may never wonder what to do with them.
In the Middle East, tomatoes are a staple on the table: raw in the lavish vegetable platters placed traditionally with romaine lettuce, cucumbers, radishes and whatever else is in season in the center of the table. Salads such as tabbouli, fattoush, baqle, and many other typical salads would not be the same without tomatoes. In cooked foods, tomatoes are a major component of sauces and stews made of vegetables and sometimes lamb. It would be hard to imagine Arabic cuisine without this cherished food that is rich in vitamins, lycopene, antioxidants, and more. But the health benefits are only surpassed by the deliciousness of eating them.
easy to make summer tomato salad © linda dalal sawaya 2015
I cannot let summer go by without making more than once a fabulous salad that was my father’s recipe. When mama was gone on a summer afternoon, daddy would prepare this for our lunch. Created only with garden-ripened tomatoes, this garlic-laden salad, spiked with fresh spearmint and a drizzling of olive oil is simple to make and exciting to taste. The few ingredients for this salad are: fresh, summer-ripened tomatoes, spearmint, garlic mashed into a puree with sea salt, and olive oil. Chilled briefly in the fridge to marinate the flavors, we then typically scooped little bites of tomato salad with snippets of Arabic bread, using the bread to soak up the juices—garlicky heaven!
July sun-ripened tomatoes in my garden © linda dalal sawaya 2015
Portland has been so hot this summer that my first home-grown tomatoes ripened in July—even the big red varieties; often only the little orange sun-gold cherry tomatoes are small enough to ripen early and graze on. Prior to discover the variety called Sun Gold, Sweet 100s were my favorite cherry tomato that I planted religiously every year. Sun Gold, a lovely, bright orange, super sweet has taken hold of my heart as number one pop-it-in-your-mouth tomato judiciously placed along the garden path.
Sun Gold variety cherry tomatoes © linda dalal sawaya 2015
This year I experimented with another variety purported to be like Sun Gold, but definitely are not as good. My solution was to roast them with zaatar and olive oil (zeit), which enhanced them as only zaatar can do to mostly anything it is added to.
orange tomatoes with zaatar © linda dalal sawaya 2015
orange tomatoes with zaatar ou zeit ready to oven roast © linda dalal sawaya 2015
orange tomatoes with zaatar ou zeit ready to oven roast © linda dalal sawaya 2015
zaatar roasted orange tomatoes © linda dalal sawaya 2015
If you have tomatoes that don’t have the flavor for eating fresh and raw, they’re best used in soups and in plates that do not require sun-drenched flavor that only sun-ripened tomatoes provide.
roasted cherry tomatoes with zaatar ou zeit a perfect summer lunch with feta and cukes © linda dalal sawaya 2015
You’ll find the complete recipe for my father’s tomato salad in Alice’s Kiitchen: Traditional Lebanese Cooking on page 64. The zaatar ou zeit roasted tomatoes are simply tossed and baked in a low over for about 30 minutes. Sahtein!
