Good morning. There may be no better summer sandwich than a tomato one, on white bread smeared wall-to-wall with mayonnaise and sprinkled lightly with flaky salt and a little cracked black pepper. I thought it unimprovable.
But as he so often does when he’s cooking, Eric Kim recently came up with a few tweaks that take things to new heights. For his sandwich (above), in addition to lightly toasting the bread (that’s a yikes for some), Eric adds to his salt and pepper a sprinkle of furikake, the savory-sweet Japanese spice blend and rice seasoning. The seaweed in the mixture, he wrote for The New York Times Magazine, “amps up the tomato’s savoriness, intensifying the harmony of fruit, carb and condiment.”
Excellent! I’m going to give that a shot for dinner this evening, with a few of the big, juicy heirloom tomatoes that are starting to show up where I shop. (Will I go further off-piste and add a sautéed soft-shell crab to each of the sandwiches? I will if there are softies at the market!)
As for what to cook during the rest of the week. …
Monday
Melissa Clark’s recipe for pasta with caramelized peppers, anchovies and ricotta is a lovely summertime meal. The ricotta makes everything creamy and the peppers provide heft, while herbs and scallions deliver a vegetal sharpness and the anchovies bring depth. Finish with more ricotta and a swirl of olive oil.
Tuesday
Hetty Lui McKinnon’s recipe for stir-fried tofu with ginger is just fantastic for an easy after-work dinner. Could you use tempeh or tofu skins in place of the extra-firm tofu Hetty calls for? You absolutely could.
Wednesday
Ham El-Waylly grates ripe tomatoes and then barely warms them through to preserve their summery freshness in his new recipe for grated tomato pasta. On a weeknight in deep summer, that’s an easy win.
Thursday
I love Genevieve Ko’s tuna salad with hot and sweet peppers for its evocation of meals eaten on the Mediterranean coast. Spoon it over crusty toast and eat with the crispest white wine you can manage — or just a cold Peroni.
Friday
And then you can welcome the weekend with J. Kenji López-Alt’s recipe for Oklahoma onion burgers: crisp, soft and smoky. If you don’t eat meat, try roasting some portobello mushroom caps in a mixture of butter, soy sauce and a drizzle of maple syrup, and use those in place of the beef.
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Now, it’s a long way from yogurt parfaits and steak haché, but Kelefa Sanneh, in The New Yorker, wrote about a new form of dance music in South Africa and the twin brothers who want to take it global. Always click on K!
Here’s Caity Weaver on her impossible mission to interview Tom Cruise, in The New York Times Magazine. Wow.
European magpies and crows are stealing anti-bird spikes from buildings and using them to build nests, my colleague Emily Anthes reports. Too bad birds aren’t real.
Finally, let’s cue up the Decemberists with “July, July!,” your tomato sandwich soundtrack. Enjoy. I’ll be back next week.
