40-41_Cooking with Ron_sum15_Copy of profile_sTEFAN_fall05.qxd 5/2/15 11:03 AM Page 40
| food
Raw tomato pasta sauce
Tomatoes COOKING WITH THE SEASON’S BOUNTY – MINUS THE COOKING BY RON MIKULAK | PHOTOS BY DAN DRY If I had known when I was in college that “food historian” was a possible profession, my career path might have been different. Alas, I am constrained merely to be an eager audience for the findings of food historians such as Richard Wrangham, whose interesting and persuasive book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, not only presents a persuasive case for the role of cooked food in human evolution, but also puts the kibosh on contemporary raw food faddists’ goofy assertion that cooking destroys enzymes in food, and therefore eating raw food is much more nutritious than eating food that is cooked.
Wrangham considers a lot of fascinating issues, such as the amount of time great apes spend masticating their raw food, and the comparative sizes of the intestinal tracts and brains in apes and humans to make the case that raw food simply cannot supply sufficient nutrition to satisfy the energy requirements of the human brain. The discovery of cooking by early hominids created more easily digested nutrition, which allowed shorter, less energy-consuming guts and larger, more energy-intensive brains to evolve. I have nothing against raw foodists, and even find their dietary and nutritional beliefs, devoid as they are of scientific merit or even common sense, sort of charming, and one would have to admit that their regimen of salads and juices, and more salads and juices, has a certain noble asceticism. Yet, there is that troublesome issue of sufficient nourishment to the brain … But, all snark aside, I want to be quick to assert my long-held devotion to one food that I consume raw in as many ways as I can find — the tomato. Locally-grown tomatoes in season are sublime. And local farmers’ willingness to grow such a gorgeously colored 40 Summer 2015 www.foodanddine.com
and subtly flavored range of new and old varieties should be celebrated even more than I am doing right now. What better summertime snack is there than a warm tomato, sliced and salted, and eaten over the sink? What is more refreshing than a cup of cold gazpacho? The dishes I am going to suggest here hardly need recipes. I seldom make gazpacho exactly the same way twice, the mix of vegetables depending on what is in the fridge that needs to be used up. Caprese salads are so simple as to be almost simpleminded, but I want to highlight the superb cherry and salad tomatoes local farmers have been gifting us with. And spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce is the ideal meal when the temperature and humidity are in the nineties, you are tired and sweaty and can barely stand the thought of cooking dinner. My lunch gazpacho preference is a chunky soup, made with dead-ripe tomatoes, cukes, bell peppers and basil, with a base of tomato juice or V-8 juice. This elegant smooth yellow gazpacho is my version of one I was served at a Barcelona restaurant some years ago, a soup that is very impressive as a start for a dinner party.