Balance of Food

Making tomato bread a worthy dish at home

You may have been to Spain and had one of the better tapas dishes: Pan de cristal con tomatoe. Otherwise, the dish is known as tomato bread.

You can't readily find the local Spanish bread or the amazing Spanish tomatoes. Yet you can replicate the dish in a decent manner and save a bunch of money.

The ingredient list is simple: tomatoes, bread, a garlic clove, kosher salt, and extra virgin olive oil. This is why quality is so crucial.

Ideally, you have a local source for tomatoes and crusty bread. You can even find local garlic this time of the year.

Cut the bread into thick slices. Toast said bread. When lightly toasted, cut a garlic clove in half. Rub the halved garlic clove on the toasted part of the bread.

Cut the tomato in half down the equator of the tomato. Grate the tomato. I mix the kosher salt and olive oil into the tomato mixture.

Spoon the tomato mixture on the toasted bread. Eat.

Pan de cristal con tomatoe is one of the best known Spanish tapas. This menu is from the Jose Andres restaurant Jaleo in Chicago. The $14 price tag is reduced to $7 if you go during the Sangria Hour as defined by 4-6 pm local time. We don't know if the portion size is reduced as well.

The Spanish tomatoes and the wonderful bread do make a difference. Still, you can replicate this dish at home, especially with local tomatoes still in bloom.

The beauty of pan de cristal con tomatoe is that you are experiencing amazing local ingredients simply prepared. If you can make toast, you can make tomato bread. This can be a local dish, whether you are in Seville, Madrid, or Barcelona as well as Toledo, Spain, er, Ohio.

Your local version will likely not be as good as getting the same version late at night in a tapas place in Spain. Your local version will taste better than a lot of foods you can get anywhere in the world.

Eating local is easier and better in California than in New Hampshire. Tomato season is a lot shorter in New Hampshire than California. Yet everywhere in the United States has a local tomato season, however short that might be.

This is an ideal time for local tomatoes. Savor them while they are here. Throw a tapas party and serve pan de cristal con tomatoe aka tomato bread. They might think you went to Spain instead of the local farmers market.

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With rising costs for restaurants and buying items in the grocery store, fancy dishes such as this one can be made for relative pennies. You can freeze the sliced bread you don't use. You can even save the cut garlic gloves for a later dish so you aren't wasting the garlic.

A baguette at the farmers market isn't that much more than a regular, lesser quality loaf of bread in a grocery store. Tomatoes at the local farmers market taste way better than what you find at a grocery store. More of your money goes to local vendors who keep the money in the community.

If you are a relative novice cook, making tomato bread can boost your confidence with little risk of messing up the dish.

photo credits: me; Jaleo restaurant in Chicago

Gift a umami filled bottle for a party instead of wine

We know the drill. Someone throws a party. You are the guest and you bring a bottle of wine as a gift for being invited to the party.

Your humble narrator loves being a guest but hates buying wine. Would love to have a system like a wedding shower with a registry, and you pick a bottle of wine from their list.

Wine is my blind spot. I could buy a 40 oz. bottle of La Fin du Monde, a great Quebecois beer. I could bring some great Michigan fruit-related hard cider.

I don't really want to bring alcohol to a party these days. I do so because the unofficial rules require this.

If I were throwing the party, I wouldn't mind a couple of bottles of wine for cooking. I would want to invite people who would know me well enough and say, "In lieu of wine, I'm bringing you a bottle of Red Boat Fish Sauce." I would love that instead of a bottle of wine.

Fish sauce is the key, though Red Boat is one of the best. Umami in a bottle. I cook with fish sauce quite a bit. I would use up a bottle of fish sauce. I wouldn't drink it, unlike a bottle of wine.

A bottle of quality fish sauce is comparable to the cost of a decent bottle of wine, so the cost factor isn't an issue.

You aren't even limited to fish sauce.

A bottle of banana ketchup from the Philippines.

A jar of ajvar from Eastern Europe.

Get some Romesco sauce from Spain.

How about dark sesame oil from Japan.

Find a good adobo sauce or butter chicken sauce.

Add flavor to an otherwise bland kitchen instead of yet another bottle of wine.

A fun little trick: Love using ajvar but it goes bad very quickly. Pour the contents into an ice tray to freeze portions.

Let the ice cube serving of ajvar thaw in the refrigerator and use in a dish. A small amount adds a lot of flavor to a dish.

The idea is that you might go down a certain, unnamed aisle in the grocery store and wonder what to do with a condiment that isn't typically in your pantry. Once the condiment is in your pantry, then you feel compelled to research ways to use that in your meal planning.

Would you rather have 10 bottles of wine, 3 of them that could have been better? Would you rather have 7 bottles of wine and 3 umami based containers?

Maybe you don't cook too often and a bottle of banana ketchup would gather dust in your cabinet. Fish sauce is subtle as long as you don't smell it. I do smell it but I can handle that smell. Tastes way better than the smell.

A Romesco sauce and ajvar have ingredients you will recognize. This could be a way to travel without leaving your kitchen.

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You may not want 10 umami containers after a party but the gift of umami can bring unexpected joy. Maybe you put Romesco sauce on your scrambled eggs, like you would with a Mexican salsa. Maybe you add an ice cube or two of ajvar to a Sloppy Joe mix.

Maybe you have chicken thighs in your freezer, which would pair well with adobo or butter chicken sauce.

Try a little bit of anything new in your kitchen. Wine has its limits in cooking. Umami has more unleashed possibilities to add flavor to your food.

photos credit: me