A Love Letter to the Summer Tomato & What I Cooked Last Week

The Best Pasta al Pomodoro, Summer Tomato Sandwich, California Avocado Crispy Rice, Sweet and Sour Chicken Meatball Bowl, Mom’s Summer Pasta

Hi everyone,

Hope you’re having a great week! I’ve been loving all the amazing summer produce in LA lately, especially the juiciest, sweetest tomatoes. Last week I threw together a simple but delicious tomato sandwich with garlic horseradish aioli, fresh basil, and of course, a perfectly ripe heirloom tomato. Slicing into those peak-summer tomatoes reminded me of my favorite ways to use them while they’re in season, like pasta al pomodoro, which I learned to make in Tuscany a few years back.

Look how gorgeous this tomato was!

Pasta al pomodoro is just pasta with a homemade tomato sauce (pomodoro means tomato in Italian!). All you really need are ripe tomatoes, an onion, some olive oil, and fresh herbs. When I first tasted it, I was blown away by how flavorful it turned out. So simple but so good. Keep reading for step-by-step instructions (with photos from Italy!) for making the sauce, plus my tips for picking the best tomatoes at the farmers market or grocery store.

First, here’s that tomato sandwich recipe from last week. It looks simple but actually explodes with flavor. I hope you give it a try if you come across a gorgeous, ripe heirloom tomato!

What I Cooked Last Week! ↓

Summer Tomato Sandwich

I love making this when summer tomatoes are at their peak! A perfectly ripe tomato should feel heavy for its size, give slightly when squeezed, and smell sweet and fragrant at the stem.

Summer Tomato Sandwich

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You can download the PDF recipe above and watch the video here :)

The Best Pasta al Pomodoro Recipe (from Italy!)

Two summers ago, my family and I went to Tuscany and took a cooking class with some incredibly talented Italian home cooks. They came to our place and showed us how to make five different kinds of pasta, and each one was the best we’d ever had. I picked up so many great tips and techniques that I still use to this day. It even inspired me to create a whole illustrated guide to “making pasta like an Italian” for my cookbook.

One of the recipes they taught us was pasta al pomodoro, which I had never made before. We cooked a simple tomato sauce from scratch. The ingredient list is short, but that’s the beauty of it—when tomatoes are in peak season, they don’t need much for their natural sweetness and flavor to really shine.

The first step is picking the ripest tomatoes you can find. Look for deep, vibrant colors and give them a gentle squeeze. They should be firm but not hard, with just a bit of give. Smell the stem end, as a ripe tomato will have a slightly sweet, earthy scent. If it doesn’t smell like anything, it probably won’t taste like much either. And feel the weight in your hand. The tomato should feel heavy for its size (this means it’ll be juicy!). Once you get home, keep the tomatoes at room temperature, do not refrigerate them! The cold dulls their flavor and can make the texture a little mealy.

To peel the tomatoes, you boil them for a few minutes until their skin splits, then dunk them in ice water to cool them down. This makes removing the skin a breeze—it slips right off.

Chop them up into small pieces!