tomato hubris

plus a recipe for a tomato and corn galette

Hello, and welcome to my vortex of gardening angst. Come for a hearty dose of tomato hubris, and stay for a juicy, savory galette recipe.

I am, at times, given to excess. As a teenager, I was so tightly wound, so regimented, that I sometimes think I’m still making up for lost everything. I spend too much money on dresses, and I’m prone to ordering dessert, and if I’m having bread, I spread butter on thick.

So when I was researching which seeds to order for the vegetable garden I started in the spring, I didn’t think twice about the type of tomato plants to order. Tomatoes, you see, fall into two distinct categories: indeterminate and determinate. Determinate tomatoes grow to a reasonable size, and then they flower and bear a round of fruit, and that’s that. Indeterminate tomatoes are the opposite: They grow and grow and flower and flower and, in theory, yield fruit for much of the summer and early fall. Of course that’s what I went with.

Here’s what I didn’t consider: That I’m not a farmer, that my patio is quite petite, that my tomato pots only came with a five-foot-tall cage, that plants tend to go crazy in the hot, humid D.C. summers. When my mom raised her eyebrows at my choice, I rolled my eyes — and then my eyes popped out of my head as my tomato plants kept growing and growing and growing and growing and growing. While my friends’ (determinate) tomato plants began to bear fruit, mine had barely started to flower, and they’d become an invasive species, bursting from their cages and threatening to overtake everything around them.

And then, finally, little green nubs of tomato began to form (and form, and form). Suddenly my tomato plants weren’t just sprouting arms; they’d become top-heavy, voluptuous ladies practically overnight. They couldn’t support the weight of their fruit, so they collapsed and snapped, and the little tomatoes, deprived of nutrients, were frozen as perpetual teenagers, green and half-sized and inedible. All the while, the plants kept growing, as if on a mission of self-destruction. I pruned the snapped branches and steeled myself for a tomato harvest of zero.

And then the other day, I glimpsed a flash of red from inside the dense tomato wilderness. I ran down the deck stairs and stuck my head in the fresh-smelling foliage and found not one but FIVE ripe, striped tomatoes.

a tomato! a miracle!

I plucked them off the vine and pruned some more — I am always pruning — and wondered if that would be it for the season. But that was yesterday, and it rained today, and I already see a new yellow flower. So maybe there will be more, or maybe the plants will keep teetering and tripping and breaking all their limbs, but at least I’ve learned my lesson: Next year, determinate tomatoes.

And right now, a tomato galette for dinner.

tomato and corn galette

serves: 2

prep time: 15 minutes

rest time: 2 hours

bake time: 30 minutes

I can’t believe I can finally give you all a tomato recipe after my vines have spent the whole summer mocking me.

The key to this galette is its hearty — but still flaky — crust. You’re filling it with meaty tomato slices, and you want a savory exterior that can contain the juice and substance inside; the satisfying crunch and texture of the cornmeal is also a great contrast to the broken-down tomatoes inside.

Oh, and as for those tomatoes: You want the most substantial (meaty, heirloom, low in seeds) ones you can find. I used the striped romas from my garden, and they were perfect, retaining just enough of their structure while softening and caramelizing.

1. Take 4 tablespoons of salted butter out of the fridge and slice it into six roughly equal-sized pieces. Put the butter back on its wrapper and stick it in the freezer for about five minutes.

2. Fill a small bowl with some water and a few ice cubes.

3. While the butter hardens slightly, stir together 33 grams of whole wheat flour, 30 grams of all-purpose flour, 18 grams of cornmeal and ¼ of a teaspoon of kosher salt in a medium-sized bowl. (That’s about a quarter-cup each of the flours and an eighth of a cup of cornmeal, but I beg you, get a cheap scale! Everything you bake will instantly become just a little bit better.)

4. Take the butter out of the freezer and add it to the dry ingredients, making a snapping motion with your fingers to incorporate it into the flour. You want to think about flattening the butter into shards, not rolling it into balls. Keep incorporating it until there are no large butter chunks remaining, and the butter shards are scattered relatively uniformly throughout the dry stuff.

5. Scoop 1 tablespoon of water out of the ice water bowl and sprinkle it into the dough. Incorporate it with your hands, and take stock of things. You may need another full tablespoon to get the dough properly hydrated, but you may need less, so start adding the water teaspoonful by teaspoonful. As soon as the dough can form a ball without lots of dry bits falling off, you’re good.

6. Take your dough ball and place it on a sheet of plastic wrap,. Flatten it slightly into a disc. Put it in the fridge for at least two hours and as long as overnight.

7. When you’re about 15 minutes away from taking the dough out of the fridge, set the oven to 425°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

8. Crack 1 egg into a small bowl. Add a splash of water and set it aside.

9. Grab a couple tomatoes and start cutting them into roughly quarter-inch-thick slices. Thinner is fine, thicker is probably a bad idea. All in all, you want 8 ounces of sliced tomatoes. (That might be one heirloom tomato, or it might be two or three smaller fruit.) Season the tomatoes with a big pinch of kosher salt and set them aside.

10. Meanwhile, begin to cut the kernels off of an ear of corn. You want 2 ounces of corn kernels, which only be about half of one ear. (Find something fun to do with the rest of the kernels. Maybe buy an extra ear and make a corn salad!) Set the kernels aside.

11. Take the dough out of the fridge, and place it on a floured surface. Roll it out into a circle or circle-adjacent shape. It should be about a quarter of an inch thick, and if the edges are a little rough, that’s absolutely fine. If the edges are super cracked and nonuniform and your crust looks more like a misshapen continent than anything round, perform a little surgery, filling cracks with bits of dough you’ve excised from other parts of the crust. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but you need something that has a loose association with the concept of a circle.

12. Dump your tomato slices into a strainer and toss them a bit, letting the excess juice run off. Put them back into the original bowl, and mix in 1½ teaspoons of flour, 1 teaspoon of sugar and the zest of half a lemon, stirring to combine. Then begin to arrange the tomatoes on your crust, overlapping them slightly and leaving about an inch of crust uncovered. Sprinkle a few corn kernels throughout, filling nooks and crannies. Add a second layer of tomatoes (and maybe even a third, depending on the shape of your galette and the thickness of your tomato slices) and the rest of your corn.

13. Begin to tuck the crust up and around the the edges of the tomato and corn pile, pinching it when necessary to keep it in place. You can try to make it pretty and uniform, or you can just tuck and fold in the most sensible way; it doesn’t matter. Your galette will be beautiful if it’s abstract (read: messy) or uniform.

14. Take the egg you set aside earlier and break it up a bit with a pastry brush, swirling the yolk into the white. Brush the galette crust with your egg wash all around the edge, getting it pretty uniformly (but thinly) covered in egg.

15. Using a metal spatula, transfer the galette to your parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake it for 30 minutes, until the crush is a golden brown and feels hard when you tap on it with your nail. Remove the galette from the oven, and allow it to cool for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, tear or slice 4 basil leaves into narrow strips and scatter them across the surface of the galette. You can feast on it as is, or you can drizzle it with a bit of balsamic reduction.