Food from another place

A lunch in Conegliano and a recipe for tomato bruschetta

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

This week I’m sharing a piece from the Abundance Writing Group Gathering, led by the delightful Mark Diacono.

Each month, Abundance Group Gathering attendees are given a prompt with the singular instruction to take no more than an hour to write and see what results. When we meet, we discuss where the prompt led us, what the process was like and a few brave souls share their writing with the group.

Way back in February the prompt was: Food from another place.

My mind immediately went to a long-ago lunch and to tomatoes. And now that my favourite summer fruit is fully in season, it also seems the right time to share this. The piece below was more or less what I wrote in an hour, with some tiny edits. I hope you enjoy it.

We are sitting outside on a covered terrace. It’s May but already the sun is playacting July.

At lunchtime, on a midday of the week, the place is nearly empty. We two sit, happy guests of our cousins, not knowing what lies ahead, perhaps pizza, some pasta? This is Italy, after all, but we also don’t care…the abandon of being here takes control and lets us be fully present.

The setting is simple—one can imagine that in a few hours’ time, the large round tables will be filled with families, children chasing each other, laughter ringing, a crescendo of voices creating a chorus of joy, written and performed for one night only.

In a life that will unfold to become full of extraordinary experiences—an Egyptian feast in the shadows of the Pyramids; drinking Dom Perignon at 30,000 feet; sitting at a table carved out of the sand on an atoll in the middle of the Indian ocean—this doesn’t seem like the sort of moment that will affix itself in the slide sorter in my mind.

But those memories are ahead for me, unformed, unimagined, impossible to conjure up.

Today, at this table, we four are family, speaking across language barriers that hold no sway, bonds forged that will last a lifetime.

And then the food begins to arrive. If I tell you red tomatoes have never tasted better, you may scoff—how can one declare a singular dish of tomatoes as the best? But those roughly chopped tomatoes, simply dressed with grassy green olive oil, sea salt, black pepper and freshly torn basil leaves, waiting to be piled on warm garlic-scented grilled bread served alongside, were the best thing I had ever eaten.

Perfectly ripe, the juices drip down our chins, onto our hands, on our plates, a baptism anointing me once and forever as an avowed disciple of the in-season tomato. Each bite a hallelujah moment of communion between the bruschetta and I.

I can tell you more, of course. My first taste of the miracle of fat white asparagus, their mauvy heads the telltale sign of their family tree relationship to their slender green cousins. The scroppino we sip, a wondrous shimmering flute of frothy lemon sorbet, Prosecco and a whisper of vodka, only detectable by the slow warmth that spreads through our veins. Thinly sliced marinated squid, a preparation for fresh fish I will come to love.

It must be so that the constant photography of things has dulled our ability to remember details unless we can pinch the screen, squint our eyes, try to remember what lays beyond the edges. But that lunch in 1993 in Conegliano had no such constraints, no phone to disrupt the meal, record the moment and sit gleaming and shiny on the table like an ominous timekeeper.

Even now, the heat of sun on my back on a warm terrace, the lazy drone of bees at their own feast, the first bite into a ripe tomato—any one of these is enough to take me back. Back to that terrace, that lunch, and to somehow understanding in an instant that moments of beauty can be as tiny as a heaped spoonful of tomatoes on a warm toasted piece of bread.

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Tomato bruschetta, Venetian style

Venice, Russell Norman

There are so many things to make with tomatoes at this bursting time of year. Why not just make a simple tomato bruschetta and be done with it? Room temperature tomatoes, diced into tiny pieces, baptised with salt, oregano instead of the usual basil, and bathed in olive oil, is all you really need to feel that summer has properly arrived.

1⅓ pounds really good ripe tomatoes (room temperature please!)

flaky sea salt

a handful of oregano leaves, stalks removed

extra virgin olive oil

4 thick slices of sourdough bread

1 clove of garlic, peeled and halved

freshly ground black pepper

1. Using a sharp or serrated knife, discard the tough stalk part of the tomatoes, and then dice into small pieces. Be sure keep the seeds and juice. Put the chopped tomatoes in a large bowl. Sprinkle generously with salt and let sit for 10 minutes.

2. Tear any large oregano leaves in half and add them to the tomatoes, along with a good glug of olive oil. Stir once or twice. Set the small oregano leaves aside for later.

3. Grill or toast the bread slices until lightly charred but still a bit springy when pressed. (A charcoal grill adds extra flavour if you have one.)

4. Rub one side of each bread slice with the garlic clove.

5. Taste the tomatoes and add more salt if needed. Spoon them generously onto the grilled bread. Top with the reserved small oregano leaves, a twist of black pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil. Cut the slices in half and serve.