045: The Perfect Summer Pasta

Rachel Roddy's Spaghetti with Cherry Tomatoes, plus thoughts (fears) on opening a bookstore

From the beginning, tomato season has been passing me by. Usually in the summer I’m vigilant for them without any preconcieved plan. I use them by making up batches of fresh tomato sauce, chopping them up and eating them with nothing but lots of olive oil and Maldon sea salt, preparing a treat of pan con tomate, that tomato tart I made last year at Jesse’s, etc etc. This year’s been different. We’ve gotten some incredible cherry tomatoes from our CSA, and I buy them every time I’m at the store, but I’m a little busier and a bit more budget-conscious, and oh, they disappear immediately.

Tycho, my now 17-month-old (for the new readers out there), loves tomatoes, and tomatoes being a fruit that you cannot stow away (hide) in the refridgerator, they are spotted immediately. He points at them and signs for more, and because I’m still working on establishing boundaries, and obsess quite a bit about the best approach with food, I always give them up when he asks. He still doesn’t have a full set of baby teeth, so the tomato skins are a bit tough for him. He pops them whole in his mouth, chews them up, and spits out the skins. To the great tomato-lover in me it feels like a waste, but the mother in me is just charmed. The other thing I’m still working on is teaching table manners (LOL kidding, he’s a toddler). Heirlooms and beefsteaks and tomatoes on the vine he’ll bite into like an apple. It’s cute and it’s messy, and boy do I miss eating them myself. He’s developing a palate and the last thing I want to do is stifle taste and appetite, so I try to be selfless about it—but I sneak them for myself when I can (and I know Reed does the same, haha). We would go completely broke if we bought enough fruit to satisfy the whims of all three people in this family. As for the fourth—Shelby (our pup) eats up all of those tomato skins if they drop to the floor, so she is happy.

The other week though, we were just back from the store, and he was distracted by the sweet cherries we bought, so the tomatoes having just landed weren’t depleted quite yet. I quickly decided on fresh tomato pasta for dinner. I have a few favorite recipes from over the years, but decided to consult my current favorite, Rachel Roddy. If you’re not familiar, Roddy is a Brit living in Rome, writing about Roman recipes for her own books and her column in The Guardian. I’m still working my way through her cookbooks, but the one I always seem to have within arms reach is her debut, My Kitchen In Rome (which is out of print in the US, but let me source you a copy!), and in it I found a recipe for Spaghetti with Cherry Tomatoes.

It’s a simple recipe written in one consice paragraph, no ingredient list or numbered steps to be seen. You simply heat a pan, add a lot of olive oil (I add a 1/4 cup), and once warm, some smashed garlic cloves. Once the garlic is fragrant and golden you add the halved cherry tomatoes. Let them do their thing for the most part, stirring every now and again and occasionally pressing them with a wooden spoon to release their juices, while the spaghetti boils in salty water. Add some basil leaves to the pan once the tomatoes are saucy, and cook a bit longer. Once the pasta is al dente, use tongs to add them to the pan—not worrying about the pasta water coming along for the ride—you want some of that starchy water to make its way into the mix. Toss thoroughly but gently, and then add more torn basil leaves. Plate in bowls and top with a couple of immaculate, fresh basil leaves just for the summery beauty of it all. If you have ricotta, a dollop of that would be delish on top.

This pasta is also great with other seasonal ingredients. I recently had 2 cobs-worth of sweet corn that I added mid-way through cooking the cherry tomatoes, so that by the time the sauce was done the corn was still intact with a bit of that crisp crunch. Another idea is cubed eggplant, either added at the same time as the tomatoes, or lightly fried up in a separate pan until they’re browned and a bit crispy, and added at the end alongside the sauce and basil.

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On a separate note, I’m planning to softly open my bookstore on August 26, and quite nervous gearing up for that. Lots of the early morning heart-butterflies that I’ve spoken of before. Our online shop is open for Fall preorders, and a limited selection of backlist/frontlist inventory (though not our entire inventory quite yet). There are so many obstacles to opening an indie bookstore. Mostly financial of course. Without getting into the weeds with niche detail, I’ve learned over the course of this long process that most bookstores have special POS systems that automatically load every title currently in print for them. We don’t have that for various reasons. The one I want is currently unavailable (they shut down their waitlist because it’s so long). And also we can’t afford it, so I went with Shopify, which I really love but I have to enter every title I want to sell manually. It’s quite literally an endless task. And on the in-person front, I’m terrified that after our soft-opening—which I’m calling a Rough Draft (pun, of course, intended)—people will be disappointed with our inventory because I don’t have…everything. We’re opening on shoe-string budget, and wholesale books are VERY expensive to buy new. At my lowest moments I think maybe Newburgh deserves someone “better” to open its first indie. But that begs the question, what makes someone better? Someone with more money? So, I’m doing my best. I hope that our customers are patient.

On the opposide side of the coin I’m really excited to open and meet our future customers and hear about the books they want to see in the store. And I’m incredibly proud of the inventory of used books that I’ve curated. I recently got some advice to never lead with the negative, but hopefully my thoughts expressed here don’t read that way. I hope that I can speak honestly about my fears without casting a cloud over my little fledgling start-up bookstore. Thank you for reading and wish me luck!

Love,

AV

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While I have you, some recommendations

Something to read and to listen to / On the recommendation of my friend, the book critic Lauren LeBlanc, I began reading (and ordered for the store), Elizabeth Rush’s memoir The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth about her experience traveling to Thwaites (aka “The Doomsday”) Glacier in Antarctica, simultaneously wrestling with her desire to have a child—which to some of us feel is at odds with concerns for the future of our planet. Visiting a glacier in peril might bring that into some perspective. By coincidence Rush’s interview on NPR began playing in the car after another podcast concluded, and I highly recommend giving that a listen, regardless of whether you might check out the book. It’s a fantastic interview (and I say that as a former book publicist).

Something to eat / I recently made an impulse buy while perusing the nut butter aisle: Biscoff Cookie Butter. Biscoff was on my mind, having just returned from our flights to/from Chicago—on Delta they give you Biscoff cookies—and I guess was feeling reckless. For the uninitiated: It is shockingly delicious. So much more so than the cookies themselves. My favorite way to eat it is on a toasted Annie’s Frozen Waffle with Maldon sea salt sprinkled on top. It’s also great with vanilla ice cream, naturally. It’s the kind of the thing I need to hide from my child, and perhaps only have in the house occasionally. Purchase at your own risk.

Something to display / Don’t forget to buy a bouquet of Sunflowers before the season is over (hopefully this isn’t landing too late!). Reed brought some home the other day and they were the most stunning addition to the household for a brief while (though they lasted kind of awhile actually!).