For summer tomatoes, the best (and simplest) recipe
The Catalan classic Pa amb tomàquet is perfect for all the juicy, ripe tomatoes at the market
Pan con tomate, or pa amb tomàquet as it’s known in Catalonia, is a dish you will find on nearly every table in the region…whether it’s a neighborhood tapas bar or a Michelin-starred restaurant. It’s as simple as its name…bread with tomato. I think it’s probably one of the easiest tapas ever: a slice of bread, toasted with olive oil, and rubbed with juicy, ripe tomatoes. While the Catalans consider it a national dish, and have certainly made it their own, I have to tell you that many people say that it was actually probably brought north by Andalusians who came to help build the railroads across the region.
This dish is so important to Catalans that they use a specific kind of tomato, called tomàquets de penjar, or “hanging tomatoes.” They have thick skins with lots of juicy seeds, which make them perfect for rubbing on bread, and they are harvested late in the fall—even after the first frost—and can be stored hanging on their vines for many many months, so we can have the best pan con tomate even out of the season! Can you imagine? We Spaniards grow a specific kind of tomato just for this dish! I love it. But for us living in the US, where we don’t have specific tomatoes, summertime is perfect for pan con tomate because the tomatoes at the farmers’ markets are going to be so ripe and sweet.
For the bread, I recommend something rustic or with lots of crusty bumps in it…the extra surface area gives the tomato more texture to rub against, to help break it down. In Spain we might use the super crispy, high-hydration bread called pan de cristal or the famous Catalan bread called pa de pagès…if you don’t have a Catalan bakery around you, you should find the best rustic sourdough you can. No matter which loaf you choose, make sure to toast each slice—I love grilling them on both sides, with a lot of olive oil to make sure they’re nice and crisp, with more surface area for rubbing the tomato.
How you assemble the tomato and the bread is kind of the most important part of this dish. To many Americans, if you ask them to make you “bread with tomatoes,” what they will do is to put thick slices of the tomato on top of bread, or even worse, to make a sandwich of the bread and tomatoes (though that is a nice way to have some extra mayonnaise in your day!). Let me say this as clearly as possible my friends…that is not pa amb tomàquet!
Instead, what you do is this: cut the tomatoes in half and rub them, raw flesh side down, straight onto the toasted bread. If the tomato is ripe and the bread is crispy, the rough surface of the bread will act like a grater and catch all that tomato pulp. But if you don’t have such beautiful sweet tomatoes you can cheat a little bit and use a box grater to crush the tomato first and then spoon the flesh onto the bread. That’s how I show you to do it in the recipe below, and how we usually do it at our Spanish restaurants—Jaleo, Mercado Little Spain, and Spanish Diner, which all serve amazing versions of the dish.
