Paste

It was an impulse buy; a last grasp at summer. The farmer and I both knew it. Ten pounds of organic Early Girl tomatoes on the scale in late November screams nostalgia. Concentrating their too-late-in-the-game flavors was the only salvage; Chef Paul Bertolli’s Tomato Conserva recipe the fruit’s rescue. Cubed and salted, the on-the-verge-of-red orbs are brought to a boil to soften, and then run through a food mill. The fine purée is spread onto a baking sheet to dehydrate in a low oven for most of the afternoon, providing an olfactory mind trip to my favorite haunts in Little Italy, shopping for the week ahead on frigid Saturday mornings.

The paste is scraped into a jar, covered with a finger of oil and refrigerated to await a busy day, maybe a skipped lunch, or an unexpected visitor, hungry and bursting with gossip. Days’ old bread will be sliced and toasted until the sesame seeds just start to singe, then mad-rubbed with fat cloves of spicy Persian Star garlic, schmeared with tomato conserva the color of July fireworks, and topped with one, perfect, shiny anchovy.