BREAD, TOMATO, GARLIC, OLIVE OIL.
The four-ingredient, four hundred year old feast that's set to be your number one go-to dish all summer long.
It’s all I’m eating from now until Easter: tomato with bread, tomato with ham, tomato with seafood, tomato with tomato. Ever since that first sighting yesterday, of a real, round, red Rouge de Marmande beefsteak tomato that smelt of summer, I’ve wanted nothing else.
And of all the tomato and bread dishes in the world – like pizza, bruschetta, and the gang – there is one that towers above them all, the mighty pan con tomate. Also known by its Catalan name pa am tomaquet, and also in Spanish, pan tumaca. The name means bread with tomato, obviously, and that’s pretty much all there is to it.
I don’t mean that, of course, as I am about to go into detail about how not to do a bad one ( trust me, the pale and pappy do exist). I learnt the hard way – at the breakfast buffets of a hundred different Spanish hotels, where you are given the fixings of bread rolls, olive oil, tomatoes and left to your own devices.
At first, I followed the traditional method: cut a bread roll in half, rub the insides with a cut clove of garlic, drizzle it with olive oil and toast it. Then cut a tomato in half and rub it on the cut halves while squeezing the insides out of it onto the bread. More olive oil, and eat.
Heresy, perhaps, but my way is better: Smash the garlic into the olive oil to infuse. Coarsely grate the tomato, skin and all, on a grater. Brush the roll with garlicky olive oil and toast or grill. Slather on the tomato and sea salt and more olive oil, and always pop the finished product back under a griller to toast the edges and warm it up again.
(As long as you’re not at a breakfast buffet in a hotel in Barcelona and your fully loaded pan con tomate gets stuck in the rotating toaster-grill and smoke starts issuing forth; my apologies)
Specifically, you’re aiming for a warm crunch through sweetly acidic, seedy, juicy, oily salty, slushy tomato on supportive bread, as a waft of garlicky olive oil and the slightly bitter fragrance of smoke take over the nose. Got it?
Some things to note, because I like to state the obvious in case it isn’t obvious:
# Use a roll, not a slice. Most recipes call for thickly cut, rustic sourdough bread that is either stale, or baked slowly in a low oven to effectively imitate staleness. This makes sense, and is quite delicious, but the propensity to still sog up all that bread in the middle with watery tomato juices is just too great. Split a bap-style roll, ciabatta, or sourdough baguette (something more substantial than fluffy), and you have the structure of the base working in your favour.
# Grate the tomatoes, don’t squish. Allow one large tomato per person.
# Grill under the griller, not in the toaster.
# Tomato bread makes a great breakfast. Bring toasted rolls, tomatoes and olive oil to the table and let people do their own thing.
# Tomato bread loves anchovies. Put the whole can on the table so people can take what they need.
# Build a meal around it. Bring out platters of jamon or salami, sizzling chorizo sausage, or potato tortilla omelette and pan-fried padron peppers, oh yeah. I love it with scrambled eggs, and roasted red and yellow peppers in olive oil, studded with capers.
# Think Nicoise, and load your tomato bread with canned tuna, anchovies and olives.
There are plenty of good versions out there in restaurant land, with the added joy of being able to add-on everything from potato tortilla omelettes to pan-fried padron peppers. Try Comida Hahndorf in South Australia (where they pop a poachie on pan con tomate y jamon for breakfast), and Marco Ambrosino and Manny Spinola’s adorable new Lola’s in Bondi Beach (where it’s topped with hand-shaved Iberico ham, oh my lord), and in Melbourne, head for Anada in Fitzroy and Asado on Southbank. But home is best.
For those who need a recipe: Tomato Bread
4 big, flat, bread rolls
100 ml fruity olive oil
1 garlic clove, finely sliced
4 big ripe juicy tomatoes
Infuse the olive oil with the garlic. Cut the bread rolls in half lengthwise and lightly grill until warm and browned. Brush each half with the garlicky olive oil.
Traditional way: Cut each tomato in half, and rub the cut side of tomato over each half, squeezing at the same time, so the juices and seeds run out and are absorbed by the bread.
My way: Grate the tomato on a coarse grater, skin and all ( chop any skin left-over and add it back in) and spoon over the bread.
Scatter with sea salt and drizzle with extra olive oil.
Return to the grill and heat until crisp and lightly scorched at the edges.
More please, Vinitus, Barcelona.
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Special thanks to my right-hand man, Terry Durack, for being my right hand with the whole grating-tomato and opening-the-bottle-of-wine thing even though my hand is nearly healed and back in business.
I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I fully support the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to be enshrined in Australia’s Constitution.
This has been my favourite breakfast since discovering it in a truck stop in Spain about 15 years ago. Yours is better.