Making the most of locally grown tomatoes

What are the easiest ways to enjoy local tomatoes?

The great virtue of local tomatoes is also their greatest challenge: the sweet, delicious juice. How does one design a dish that makes use of every single seasonal drop of it?

The answer is wheat. Bread and pasta vie for the title of Best Tomato Helper. You be the judge.

First, the tomato sandwich. Take good, American-style close-grained white sandwich bread (i.e. Arnold or Pepperidge Farm) and toast it lightly. Spread two slices thinly but surely with real mayonnaise. Using a serrated knife, cut the tomato as thin as you can and pile half of it on a slice of bread. Sprinkle with salt and then pile on the rest of the tomato. Use more salt, and then top with the second slice of bread. (Thinly slicing the tomato is key here so that you can easily bite through the sandwich without taking half of the tomatoes with you.)

Moving in a more Italian direction, you could toast thick slices of good, rustic bread and immediately rub them with a cut clove of garlic. Drizzle a little good olive oil on top, then lay on the tomato slices, some salt and more olive oil. You got some fresh basil or thyme around? Bring it on. You have just made bruschetta, pronounced brew-sket-ta.

Or, cut your good, rustic bread into cubes and toast them. Put them in a bowl with chopped tomatoes, olive oil, salt, pepper, some herbs, some chopped onion; let it sit for a while so the bread can soak up some of the juice, and you've got panzanella.

Finally, pasta con pomodori crudi. To my mind, pasta with fresh, uncooked tomatoes often falls short because the hot pasta and the cold tomatoes just don't marry. Here's what I do: I bring a large pot of salted water to boil, and while it does, I put a few peeled and lightly smashed cloves of garlic and a few tablespoons of olive oil in a deep pan. Turn on the heat to medium and cook just until the garlic colors and begins to smell. Turn off the heat. Add to the pan your roughly chopped tomatoes (about a pound for a pound of pasta) and a teaspoon of salt.

Cook pasta until it is a few minutes short of done. Then, transfer it into the pan with the tomatoes. (Use a strainer or Chinese "spider" if it's macaroni, tongs if its spaghetti). Turn the heat to high and finish cooking the pasta with the tomatoes. When it's al dente, add some freshly ground pepper and some fresh herbs, if you like, and serve.

What's the best way to cook fresh corn

I know people love to roast corn on the grill, but I find that it always takes up too much space and too much time. An almost identical result can be achieved by roasting it in the oven.

Preheat the oven to 425. (If you're cooking something else at anywhere from 350 to 450, you'll be fine; just adjust the timing accordingly.) Trim the stalk of each ear so it's about an inch long and then peel off the first few layers of husk. Trim the tops of the ears so the remaining husks are flush with the tip of the ear. Put the corn into the oven, right onto the oven rack, and cook for about 20 minutes. That's it.