no-cook heirloom tomato pasta with feta, basil, and smoked salt
Imagine you are nine. You have spent all summer raising caterpillars in a clear plastic cube with a vented lid. In the golden hours of 4 to 7 pm, after the point of needing sunscreen and before dinner was done grilling, you sat in the cul de sac of your suburban neighborhood and attended to your caterpillar diorama, waiting for butterflies to hatch. But now a haze of sidewalk chalk dust, propane, cut lawn, ripe mulch, black driveway tar, bug spray, and burnt Italian dressing chicken marinade, fermented all summer into a thick sheath, has settled over the neighborhood, and by August you can’t breathe. Something is changing. Stretched-out mornings of swim lessons and cheese sandwiches and Nickelodeon are now chaotic afternoons spent in the aisles of the new Target, wanting to play at the Sega display but being dragged instead to pick out a 48-pack of Crayola markers. The pit of dread you feel is the threat of Return to Routine—early bedtimes, bleary mornings, Report Card Day, bus stops, mixed vegetables in steam-fresh microwave packs—rumbling like thunder in the distance, encroaching on your hard-won freedom. This is the age, I think, where (barring other tragic circumstances) most of us become conscious of the concept of endings, because summer does not last forever and guess what? Nothing does! And you just have to Accept It, because there is absolutely nothing you can do about it and there never will be.
Yet just a few months prior, I felt invincible. Three months of free time to a kid feels like three years. I woke up every day with the total freedom of knowing I could play video games in the air-conditioned basement, go to the pool, draw all over the driveway with my big fat chalk sticks, sit on the grass with my caterpillars while my dad threw basketballs. At night we might eat at the sticky booths of the taqueria, go to Blockbuster just to walk around, drive fast around the abandoned parking lot of the K-Mart, get a Dairy Queen Blizzard. The freedom I felt waking up each morning wasn’t because I didn’t know where I would be, or what I would do, but because I knew I would not be at school, which I hated. Not because I was bad at school (the opposite), but because even then, at nine, I resented that other people could have so much control over the mechanics of my existence: could dictate where I stood, where I sat and who I sat next to, what I had to read and how quickly I was allowed to finish a chapter, when I had to run and how fast, what time lunch was and what was served, what I had to draw in art class. The end of summer meant the end of doing what I wanted to do and the start of a much longer season stuck doing things I had to do simply because that’s What You Do, which was never a good enough reason; counting down the weeks until the next time I could be free, only to realize the increasingly fleeting nature of that freedom with every passing year. You are never actually free. You are only sometimes taking a break from captivity. Kids don’t know this.
The night before school started, I didn’t want to come in. My caterpillars had all hatched, but they were not the butterflies I thought they’d be. They were moths, furry and white with dusty paper wings. I knew what it meant. I knew it was over. My mom had to drag me from the cul de sac grass, plunk me on the washing machine, and force me to wash my pavement-black feet with hand soap in the utility sink. We had dry burgers for dinner, well-done. I would remember this feeling in later-life Augusts when my friends, following an invisible clock, stopped wanting to drink cold sweaty wine on restaurant patios on Wednesday nights because they wanted to Get a Good Night’s Sleep before work instead, leaving me to prolong the inevitable alone. I have always been one of the last ones out, long after everybody else accepted that it was time to go inside.
Back then, I didn’t eat tomatoes or most other foods, so there was no association between produce and seasons. Now, I associate the rising action of heirloom abundance with the final ascent of summer, a moment in time sandwiched between huge green salads and responsible weeknight assemblies of broiled fish and roasted vegetables and slow-simmered broth. This pasta is one last blast of summer euphoria before being forced to retreat indoors: the best and ripest heirlooms, transformed without heat into a silky sauce thanks to a long marinade of olive oil, butter, red wine vinegar, and smoky salt to draw out their liquid, then tossed with simple spaghetti and fresh basil and punctuated with bits of briny feta. It is not the end forever, but it is a goodbye for now. It is the sendoff both the season, and you, deserve to savor one last time before we come inside.
I waited a long time to post this because I have been in more denial than usual. But today is 9/19, and I can’t afford to draw it out anymore. The window of summer will close tomorrow, but you know what? Whatever. Now is actually the perfect time to make this pasta. I don’t think there’s ever been a better one. Open up some weeknight wine. Let the cosmic shift of the equinox propel you forward. Smack a mosquito and really feel it. Because yes, it may be time to come around to soups and stews and all of that, but at least until 9/21, the calendar still reads “summer,” the heirlooms are still for sale, the sun still shines in the evening, and there is still the rest of your life ahead of you to settle down into Routine when you’re ready.
RECIPE
Raw tomatoes at their summer peak become a clean, simple no-cook sauce when squeezed, chopped, and salted to release all their sweet juices. Grated garlic and an acid kick from red wine vinegar keep things light and bright to beat back end-of-summer dread.
Effortful time: 10 minutes
Total time: 45 minutes
Serves 2
YOU NEED
1 lb. heirloom tomatoes, very ripe
1 garlic clove
2 tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
4 tsp. red wine vinegar
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
Flake salt like Maldon, preferably smoked
8 oz. good spaghetti
1/2 cup crumbled feta
1 small bunch of basil leaves, torn
MAKE IT
Prep your tomatoes. Slice tomatoes in half around the midline, so you have a clear top and a bottom of each tomato (vs two sides). Gently squeeze out the gloopy innards and discard them. You’ll be left with a bunch of tomato shells. Chop up the tomato shells into small pieces using a very sharp knife.
Create the “sauce.” Throw the chopped tomatoes into a bowl with the butter, olive oil, and vinegar. Grate a garlic clove over the top. Sprinkle in two pinches of smoked salt — this helps the tomatoes lose their juice, which you need for sauce. Mash with your hands or a potato masher until everything is combined in a paste. Set aside for at least 30 minutes.
Cook pasta. When you’re ready, heat and salt water for pasta. Cook the pasta to al dente.
Combine pasta with “sauce.” Once the pasta is finished, transfer it with tongs straight into your tomato bowl and toss. The pasta water still clinging to the strands will emulsify with the fats, aglio e olio style, and create your sauce.
Serve it up. Toss with the feta and fresh basil, and one final pinch of smoked salt. Drizzle more oil on if you want to live luxuriously.