I have always thought of myself as a summer hater. I hate the heat. I hate the smell. I hate the dirt. That’s New York for you, anyway. Maybe summer is nicer in other places.
But September! What a stunner. My favorite month. The back-to-school possibility of it all. The return to routine. The cooler breeze. The spotless skies. It’s perfect.
And today, as I was at my usual Saturday morning farmers’ market a few blocks away, I realized even more why September is the best month: in the one way that summer IS great (the produce), September is still, technically after all, summer. There’s corn. There’s eggplant. There are beans. And there are still stoplight-colored heirloom tomatoes blushing from every stall, waiting for you to pinch their cheeks and take them home.
Today I grabbed a pound of ripe green heirloom tomatoes and a pound of bucatini and made a September Saturday summer lunch. I used my beloved hand blender to blitz the tomatoes into, basically, green tomato water. I didn’t even cut them first; it takes 15 seconds. I boiled the bucatini – the pasta that looks like thick spaghetti with a hole in the middle for drinking up all that tomato sauce like a straw – until it was two minutes undercooked from the package directions. After I drained it, I added olive oil back to the same pot (one pot wonder!), toasted a garlic clove, added in my green tomato water, and dumped in my VERY al dente bucatini, which did what it does and sucked up all that tomato sauce until the pasta was cooked and the pan was nearly dry. You can leave it there, and why not because it’s delicious, but I tore in some fresh mint that I’m attempting to grow on my windowsill (it’s touch-and-go right now). You could use basil.
I love this pasta for being at once familiar and unexpected. Like the cool breeze wandering in from my balcony, it feels so fresh. The tomato sauce is almost raw – just cooked enough to allow the pasta to cook within it. The fresh spike of the herbs, also raw and fragrant as they tan on the hot pasta, feels like cool grass, and the olive oil I drizzled on at the end was also grassy. It brings the outside in. I loved its sophisticated simplicity, its ease. And after an insane first week back in the office after Labor Day, I loved that it was done in one pot in 15 minutes for under $10 and adults and children alike were delighted.
Some thoughts. The green tomato is not the unripe green tomato you’d use for fried green tomatoes. It’s a fully ripe green tomato and the sauce won’t work with the other kind of green tomato. That said, while the ripe green tomato is slightly tarter than its red and yellow cousins, this recipe will work with any color of ripe tomato. It’s perfect as a main course but would so make a fantastic side to grilled shrimp or roasted chicken. I hope it brings the same sense of smug September satisfaction to you as it did to me. Bon app!
September is Still Summer Green Tomato Bucatini
serves 4
INGREDIENTS
- 1 pound of bucatini pasta (I like De Cecco)
- Salt
- 1 pound of RIPE green tomatoes (as opposed to the unripe ones, which are used for fried green tomatoes; please also note that this sauce can be made with red or yellow or any color of tomatoes for that matter)
- 2 tablespoons of olive oil, plus more for garnish
- 1 small garlic clove, peeled
- A handful of fresh basil or mint leaves, sliced or torn, whatever’s easier
METHOD
Bring a large pot of water to boil, salt it, and cook the pasta 2 minutes short of the pasta’s cooking instructions (De Cecco recommends 9-11 minutes, so I do 8 (2 less than the average)). Drain.
Meanwhile, use a hand blender (less cleanup) or a regular blender to pulverize and puree your tomatoes completely. Set aside.
Use the same pot that you used for the pasta and add 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Toast the whole clove until golden on both sides – 2-3 minutes total. Add the pureed tomatoes and good pinch of salt. Add the pasta back into the sauce and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Cook, tossing occasionally, until the sauce is mostly absorbed into the pasta and the pasta is al dente. (Because you are keeping the flame low here so that tomatoes keep their fresh flavor, this can take about 5 more minutes.) Just before serving, toss in the mint or basil or both.
Serve in bowls. Garnish, if you like, with a drizzle of olive oil and some torn fresh basil and/or mint leaves.
