If you are looking to support queer Black lives, check out this link for a list of organizations you can donate to. Especially relevant to anyone reading a food blog is The Okra Project, which pays Black trans chefs to go to the homes of Black trans people and cook them a meal at no cost. I have made a few donations over the last several months and hope you will do the same.
Photo taken very quickly before the sandwich was devoured.
We’ve been getting a farm share box this summer from Rock Steady Farm, a women- and queer-owned co-op farm that grows sustainable produce. It’s wonderful; we’ve gotten so much delicious cheese, produce, and eggs. If you’re local, I highly recommend signing up next summer.
We got the first round of tomatoes a couple weeks ago (not the week before, when we got a bag of sugarplums and the person handing them out incorrectly identified them as tomatoes, leading to a minor panic when I got home with them) — little cherry tomatoes, clustered together, waiting for a tomato lover and a tomato skeptic to figure out what to do with them. After we got the slicer tomatoes the next week and they were still untouched, I told myself enough is enough, and made these slow-roasted tomatoes from Smitten Kitchen. Great, good work me, right? No, they sat in the fridge for a few more days while we ate other things. Finally today I was figuring out lunch and remembered we had a few last slices of sourdough, an unopened block of cheddar, and the tomatoes. As the resident tomato skeptic, I thought to myself that a palatable way to ease myself into tomato-eating would be to put them in a grilled cheese. Tomatoes and grilled cheese are a natural pairing, after all. And they were, so here we are. I’m a little less skeptical now.
Slow-roasted tomato grilled cheese
The basket
Slow-roasted tomatoes or some other form of roasted, tiny, crisp but still juicy tomatoes
White cheddar
Bread of your choice (I recommend sourdough)
Unsalted butter
The path
Heat a cast-iron skillet or indoor grill pan over medium heat.
Smear one side of each piece of bread with a thick layer of butter. On the other side, arrange a single layer of tomatoes to cover as much of the bread as you can manage. Grate a thick layer of cheddar over the tomatoes, enough that you can’t see them anymore.
Put the sandwich in the pan, and grate more cheddar over the top piece of bread.
Flip when golden brown, then remove from pan when the other side is golden brown and the cheese is crispy. Put on a plate, cut in half, become optimistic about tomatoes.