Pa amb tomàquet
Pa amb tomàquet, Catalan for 'bread with tomato', is one of the basic dishes -- perhaps
the basic as well as the most beloved dish -- of Catalan cuisine. As is the case with so many of the best things to eat, the genius of this dish lies in its simplicity, and perfection in its preparation relies no less on the discipline of the maker to respect that simplicity than it does on the excellence of the ingredients.
The list of ingredients is the following:
bread
garlic
tomato
salt
olive oil
Since the basic ingredient is bread, there is no point in trying to make
pa amb tomàquet unless one has good bread with which to work. Good peasant style bread, as can be got from bakers who specialise in Italian and French breads here in Chicago, is required. For me, that more often than not means D'Amato's but there are a number of other first rate local bakers whose wares would work well here. The bread is sliced and toasted. One then takes a clove of garlic and rubs the garlic across the two sides of the bread; thanks to the texture resulting from the toasting, juice and rasped off particles of raw garlic are left on the bread. Next, one halves a perfectly ripe tomato and rubs this across the surfaces of the bread, leaving the bread slightly coloured with bits of pulp and nicely moistened with the fruit's juice. Finally one applies a bit of extra virgin olive oil to the bread and a pinch of sea salt and
heus! There you have it.
The toasted bread, the raw garlic and the ripe tomato all lend this dish a surprising degree of sweetness, which is balanced nicely by the piquant aspect of the raw garlic, the salt and the nice complexity of excellent olive oil.
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Simplicity is the virtue of this dish but that is not to say that one must necessarily eat it all on its own. A variation which I enjoy, when the tomatoes I have are superior quality beefsteaks, is to finish the dish by placing slices of the tomato on the bread and applying a bit of sea salt, a dash of coarsely ground black pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil to the tomato slices. I let the dish rest a minute or two, so that the juice of the tomato, drawn out by the salt, mingles with the olive oil and is absorbed by the bread.
Pa amb tomàquet can be accompanied nicely by an anchovy or sardine, a slice of cheese or some manner of cured pork product. But before one tries it with an accompaniment, one should first savour the dish, when the tomatoes are at their very best, in the maximally simple way or embellished only with a slice of tomato, something not canonical in the
països catalans but an excellent gilding of the bread with the apple of gold.
Here is a Catalan website devoted to this humble treat:
pa amb tomàquet
Antonius
Post-site-move character problems fixed.
Last edited by
Antonius on April 26th, 2005, 8:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
Alle Nerven exzitiert von dem gewürzten Wein -- Anwandlung von Todesahndungen -- Doppeltgänger --
- aus dem Tagebuch E.T.A. Hoffmanns, 6. Januar 1804.
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Na sir is na seachain an cath.