Three tomato toppers for the first tomatoes

Three flavours to welcome the first tomatoes: Lime Leaf Dressing, Green Pangrattato and a Sort-Of Tonnato.

Pic by me from my cookbook, From the Veg Patch

My tomato harvest is poised on a knife edge.

The fruit has set in abundance, which is more than they usually do, and I have bunches eight tomatoes long dripping from most plants. But the British Summer has been wet and cloudy and so the tomatoes remain stubbornly green. Will they ripen in a miraculously warm September? Or will I be back here in a few weeks with a trio of green tomato recipes? We can only wait.

Still, a few have ripened and will be treated like rare jewels.

Carried to the kitchen by gentle hands, there to be lavished with attention and anointed with only the best dressings that will make them sing. This harvest is too precious for passata. These are for salads. For parading front and centre of the dish, taking all the limelight. So this week, I offer three flavours that will make your tomatoes sing and help you enjoy the harvest, however limited in size.

All the below dressings or toppings are best served with the finest tomatoes you can find, roughly and irregularly sliced, and served at room, or garden, temperature. And, honestly, nothing else. To do more would take away from the magic of a just picked, sun-warmed tomato in August.

Here are the first two recipes. Paid subscribers can scroll down for the third recipe as this week’s Extra Helping and for a printer-friendly PDF of all three.

Three Tomato Toppers

Image credit: Kathy Slack

Tomatoes with Makrut Lime Leaf Dressing

I had a salad of tomatoes and lime leaves at Jikoni a few months ago and it blew my mind. Who’d have thought this flavour combination would work so well? Fortunately, Ravinder Bhogal did, and I am thankful for her glorious creativity. Not least because I have a makrut lime tree growing in a pot in my kitchen and not nearly enough reasons to use the leaves, of which there are many. (This recipe does hinge on the leaves being fresh and young, so if you’re short, let me know and I’ll post some.)

Serves 4

• 10 young, fresh makrut lime leaves

• 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• ½ lime, juiced

• Tomatoes for four

Remove the vein from half the lime leaves and chop them so finely they almost become a powder. Combine with 3 tablespoons of olive oil and the lime juice, plus a pinch of salt, and set aside for a few hours so the flavours can infuse.

Meanwhile, heat the last tablespoon of olive oil in a small frying pan set on a medium-high heat. Add the remaining lime leaves and fry for 2-3 minutes, turning halfway, until they stop fizzing (which means the water has evaporated). The knack here is to have the heat sufficiently high to cook off the water without it being so hot it browns the leaves. Drain on kitchen paper and marvel when they crisp up as they cool.

Chop the tomatoes any which way and drizzle with the lime leaf oil. Scatter the crispy leaves on top, maybe crumble a few, and serve (perhaps with a burrata in the middle as they do at Jikoni).

Tomatoes with Green Pangrattato

Shamefully, I only recently discovered the Italian tradition of topping dishes with flavoured, toasted breadcrumbs called pangrattato. And how many salads have slipped by in underwhelming obscurity because of my ignorance? Many. Pangrattato adds texture, flavour and a certain finesse to any dish and can be adapted to use whatever flavours you have to hand – parsley/lemon, anchovy/chilli, garlic/anything. Here, I’ve used caperberries for a sour hit to flatter sweet tomatoes.

Serves 4

• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• 2 tbsp pine nuts

• 2 tbsp panko breadcrumbs

• 1 garlic clove, crushed with a little coarse sea salt

• ½ lemon, zested

• Small handful of basil leaves

• 6-8 caperberries (or capers)

• Tomatoes for four

Warm the olive oil in a frying pan over a low-medium heat then add the pine nuts, stirring regular until they begin to turn golden. Add the breadcrumbs and garlic and fry until the breadcrumbs are blonde and crispy. Keep the heat gentle to avoid the garlic browning. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon zest, basil leaves and caperberries.

Chop the tomatoes any which way and sprinkle the flavoured breadcrumbs on top. Serve immediately or the breadcrumbs will go soggy (though there are worse things in this life than tomato-juice-soaked breadcrumbs).