Making the Perfect “Pan con Tomate” Isn’t as Easy as It Looks
Why Are We Catalans the Only Ones Obsessed with Pan con Tomate?
“More than a recipe, pan con tomate is a way of life,” says food scholar (and chef!) Toni Massanés, director of the Alicia Foundation (ALImentation and Science). So, how long have we been enjoying this iconic dish? Like all cultures, we Catalans love to spice up our history (if we were a superhero, we’d definitely be Spider-Man). It’s hard to imagine a more quintessentially Catalan food than pan con tomate. If it weren’t impossible to argue (tomatoes arrived in Spain after the discovery of America), I’m sure someone would claim that Catalan cuisine began in 700 BC, with a priestess rubbing tomatoes under the pines of Empúries.
Let me quote Néstor Luján via Leopoldo Pomés (and if you haven’t read the delightful book Theory and Practice of Pan con Tomate, Tusquets, 2016, you’re missing out): “The first mention of pan con tomate in Catalan literature dates back to 1884, just 132 years ago,” and then [Luján] adds: “Pan con tomate, invented by our farmers to soften and flavor dry bread slices in the summer, making use of the tomato abundance during a certain moment of the harvest, can hardly be called ancient. In gastronomy, things often seem older than they actually are.”