Alex Jackson’s Pappa al Pomodoro
A recipe for a summer bread and tomato soup. Words and images by Alex Jackson.
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Welcome to Vittles Recipes! This summer we are featuring some of our favourite cooks as guest recipe writers. Our regular roster of columnists will start up again after a well-deserved break. This week’s guest writer is Alex Jackson. You can read our archive of cookery writing here.
Pappa al Pomodoro
A recipe for a summer bread and tomato soup. Words and images by Alex Jackson.
Pappa al pomodoro is one of my favourite things to cook, but it’s been – crikey! – about six years since I’ve last made one. Which is a shame, for this is the kind of simple summer dish that I wished that I cooked all the time. In my defence, during my tenure at Noble Rot, a restaurant group rightly famous for its wine lists, soups were strictly off the menu – forbidden! Because, as the received wisdom has it, soup does not go with wine. (I happen to think that some soups do go with wine, but I won’t get into that argument here.)
As I write this column, I have just two weeks left of my notice period at Noble Rot. I’m taking some time off this summer, and then I’m going to start working in a café – a much needed change of pace, and also a golden opportunity for a sometimes-frustrated cook to make something a bit less posh restaurant.
So here I am, on the hottest day of the summer so far, making pappa al pomodoro, a thick, tepid soup comprising cubes of stale bread and basil in a loose tomato sauce. This rustic soup is exactly the kind of thing I feel most comfortable cooking: what it lacks in refinement it makes up for in real soul. The word ‘pap’ in English has a mildly depressing connotation, but this is a word borrowed from the Latin, in which ‘pappa’ means ‘food for children’, and the verb ‘pappare’, simply, ‘to eat’. In modern Italian, ‘pappàre’ is ‘to gobble up’, or ‘to wolf down’. It is with this latter enthusiasm that we must approach the dish, summery comfort food of the highest order: the tomatoes humming of garlic, basil, and sunshine, peppery olive oil giving it body and bite, and the bread cooked down to a savoury wobbly custard.
With something as simple as this dish, there is nowhere to hide. Your ingredients must be top-notch, your technique accurate, and your seasoning impeccable. This type of cooking is nothing clever, nothing new, nothing you couldn’t make at home, yet somehow, if done right, it’s the mark of a really good cook, and what FUN it is to just concentrate on making the best tomato sauce you possibly can.
In order to succeed, the tomatoes should be very ripe (easier said than done!). San Marzanos are my usual choice but go with whatever variety you think will yield the sweetest, juiciest sauce. A spoonful of sugar helps to smooth things along, bringing the best out of the fruit and making the flavours pop, just like a little pinch of salt does in something sweet. Ciabatta usually works well, but don’t feel like you have to use a Tuscan-style bread. I find that good-quality sourdough tends to add a bit too much acidity, so I usually go for an inauthentic supermarket equivalent, like a sourdough bloomer.
There is apparently some debate as to whether pappa al pomodoro should be served in the summer or in the winter. I am firmly in the summer camp, and so should you be, because tomatoes and basil are made for hot days like this one. This soup is an expression of tomatoes at their peak, just as vital as pasta with fresh tomato sauce, or a simple raw tomato salad. Choose your tomatoes carefully, and cook them down with care, and this will be one of the best things you eat all season.
Pappa al pomodoro
Serves 2 or 3
Time 55 mins plus cooling