Melty Caprese Sandwiches. Rey Lopez/photo; Lisa Cherkasky; food styling, for The Washington Post Every September, when fall starts to come into focus, I get jumpy. Stone fruit season is about to end! The good melons are almost gone! Have I eaten enough corn? Peppers? Tomatoes? The answer is always no, but that’s the bittersweet thing about seasons: They’re special because they’re fleeting.
Come July or August, when I taste the year’s first really good tomato (or peach or melon or cherry), I make it my mission to eat as many of them as possible. This new recipe – inspired by the salad of tomatoes, mozzarella and basil from Capri, but stuffed into a garlic bread bun and warmed until the cheese melts – is meant to say goodbye to summer. Earlier this year, I tried to grow tomatoes on our small back patio.
It’s paved over, so I planted a few seedlings in big plastic pots, feeling unusually optimistic. I tended to them carefully, watching buds form and encouraging the vines to wander. But then, one week when we were away, the summer sun took over and fried the leaves to a crisp.
My 2024 harvest? Three tiny cherry tomatoes. Fortunately, I live within walking distance of several farmers markets. Skilled growers satisfied my tomato needs for most of the summer, and then, just the other day, family came to visit from central Ohio with a bowl of homegrown tomatoes in tow.
(Thank you, Linda and Tony!) Now that the sun sets earlier every day, the air turns cooler as dinnerti.