A Corny Tomato Sandwich
Come August, the only thing on par with a just-picked, burstingly ripe tomato is an ear of just picked, crunchy and super sweet corn.
Of course, even better is a combination. Though there are many menu options in this regard, sandwiches are often left out, unless you count a grilled cheese with tomato served with a cup of smokey corn chowder. While that certainly sounds tempting, when tomatoes are this good, you really ought to take the opportunity to show them off. Enter the tomato sandwich. Served on toasted slices of a yeasted corn bread, spiked with a creamy puree of freshly shucked kernels, it may be one of the best produce showcases of the season.
Tomatoes come in many forms. My favorite happens to be an heirloom that goes by the name of Big Rainbow; Pineapple is a close second. Both are hefty, sweet, bi-colored varieties that have just enough acid to really scream tomato. If you're lucky enough to find these, by all means use them. But, whatever you can buy freshest and ripest is best- ripe tomatoes are the only thing that makes this sandwich worthwhile.
I had my first tomato sandwich when I was 16 years old. I had just returned home from the first day of my senior year of high school and was feeling like Summer had been lost. In hopes to create some sort of edible denial, I picked a tomato off a little Jet Star plant my mom had successfully grown in a drywall bucket near our back porch. I toasted some Pepperidge Farm Country White bread (something we rarely ever had in the house as my parents preferred everything to be labeled whole wheat), slathered it with Helman's mayo and layered on the impossibly juicy tomato.
Even that original sandwich was pure heaven. Summer embodied. Imagine how much better it is when you add corn.
Yeasted Corn Bread
In lieu of providing lengthy instructions, I'll provide some basic guidelines to create your own based on whatever enriched white bread recipe you already have.
For a standard 5-6 cup white bread recipe, replace 1 1/2 cups white flour with stone ground cornmeal.
Scrape the kernels from 2 ears of fresh sweet corn and puree in a blender. Use this to replace 1/2 cup of water in your recipe, adding it with eggs and/or butter or oil.
Mix, knead, allow to rise and bake as usual.