79. Basil and Tomato

Is there a marriage of herb and vegetable (well, technically herb and fruit) more clearly made in heaven than the combination of basil and tomato? Try this experiment: Take a (preferably homegrown) vine-ripened tomato and cut it into quarter-inch slices from top to bottom. Spread the slices, overlapping one another in a circle, on a plate. Insert a single basil leaf between each slice. Sprinkle very lightly with salt and freshly ground pepper. Drizzle a little extra virgin olive oil over the slices and sit down in a sunny place with a knife and fork to savor your creation. Eat slowly, one small bite at a time, making sure you always have a bit of basil as well as tomato on the end of your fork. After you do this, you'll probably replace the expression, "Stop and smell the roses" with "Sit down and savor the basil and tomatoes."

The tomato, introduced throughout Europe sometime in the sixteenth century, was believed to have aphrodisiac properties; when you taste the lush gorgeousness of a fresh tomato on a sunny day, you will understand why. The Italian name for tomato-pomodoro (golden apple) -- probably derives from the color of one of its varieties, but it may also have to do with the high value that the Italians accord this incomparable fruit.

Today the tomato appears everywhere in Italian cooking, particularly in the south. And where the tomato goes, can basil be far behind? Virtually every sauce that includes tomatoes calls for basil to give the sweet, juicy flavor of the tomatoes a fuller, livelier taste-to "kick it up a notch," as TV chef Emeril Legasse is fond of saying as he adds outrageously spicy ingredients to one dish or another. But basil does not overpower tomatoes as some herbs and spices do to the foods they flavor. Instead, it deepens and ennobles the tomato's essential flavor, reminding us that both plants are gifts of the earth's bounty.

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