Pan Tomate (Tomato Bread)

The Recipe:

Pan Tomate / Tomato Bread

A classic tapa that you are sometimes charged for and sometimes given free and I could happily eat all day everyday.

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Course Side Dish, Snack

Cuisine Spanish

Servings 2

Ingredients

  

• 1 tomato 🍅
• 1 Clove Garlic 🧄 (optional) Remove any green bits, mashed/crushed
• 1 tsp Olive oil 🏺 Extra virgin
• 1 pinch salt 🧂 to taste
• bread of choice 🥖 baguette, crusty, sourdough – whatever you like. Toasted or not, but toasted highly recommended.
• 1 wedge manchego cheese 🧀 optional

Instructions

 

• Slice your tomato(es) in half and grate into a bowl, down as close as you can to the skin (I use the big holes on our box grater). If your tomato(es) are watery, spoon out the extra liquid.
• Add garlic, olive oil and salt. Give it a good mix and taste. Adjust salt to taste
• Slice bread and toast (toasting = optional but recommended).
• Bonus step – thinly slice some manchego cheese (if using) – I use a cheese plane.
• Serve as-is, with a spoon for the tomato and a cheese plane to cut more manchego and assemble slices of tomato bread as you eat.

To assemble

• Spread a spoonful or two on slice of bread or toast
• Top with cheese
• Nom.

Keyword bread, cheese, garlic, snack, tomatoes

The Waffle:

I’ve seen so many recipes that said to rub the garlic on the toast and then grate the tomato with the bread onto the bread but it never worked right or came out like you get it at the restaurants and bars. Maybe my bread wasn’t rustic and sufficiently bubble laden or toasted hard enough. Its also likely my tomatoes were never tender juicy ripe enough.

On our last trip to Spain they had a tomato bread bar at the breakfast buffet, complete with conveyor belt toaster. A TOMATO BREAD BAR! And that’s the first time I’ve seen it served as a sauce to top your bread. Suddenly I understood the pictures next to the recipe calling for bread graters. This is how they get so much tomato on that slice of toast.

This is one recipe where I don’t double or triple or wing it with the garlic. This is a raw dish so the garlic doesn’t mellow. And sometimes, I skip the garlic. No really, some times I do.