TOMATOES

TOMATOES ARE A STAPLE IN SUMMER SALADS. The mildly acidic juices from the tomatoes themselves provide a proper base for a dressing with little or no additional vinegar or other acid. To make this work, you need to extract a little of the juice from the tomatoes before you make salads. Simply cut the tomatoes into wedges, sprinkle them with salt, and wait about 15 minutes for the juices to exude.

To serve round (or beefsteak) tomatoes as a side dish, it's best to combine them with bread crumbs and bake them. There are two choices—the tomatoes may be cored and stuffed, or they may be halved and sprinkled with the crumbs. We tested both methods and found that all the liquid material in the tomatoes must be removed to get the crumbs to brown and crisp in the oven. This is easier to do when the tomatoes are halved and sprinkled with crumbs. It's hard to remove all the seeds from a whole cored tomato. It's also tricky to get much stuffing into a whole cored tomato, while a halved tomato has plenty of moist surface area to which crumbs can adhere.

We found it best to bake the tomatoes as quickly as possible—you want the crumbs to brown but don't want the tomatoes to soften too much. An oven temperature of 400 degrees delivered the best results in our testing, quickly crisping the crumbs and allowing the tomatoes to warm through and soften slightly but still hold their shape.

For a quicker side dish, try sautéing cherry tomatoes. The idea is to get them in and out of the pan quickly, so they don't become mushy and fall apart. We found that medium-high heat does the best job. In our testing, we found that many cherry tomatoes are slightly bitter. We liked the results when we sprinkled a little sugar over the tomatoes before they went into the pan. If your cherry tomatoes are especially sweet, you may omit the sugar, but in most cases we find that it helps balances the acidity in the tomatoes.