THIS EARLY GIRL RECIPE. BOUNTY LAUNCH TOMATO SEASON WITH

Flavorful tomatoes concentrate their sweetness with a light poaching

For many, myself included, summer is all about tomatoes. Whether you live where you can grow them yourself (generally outside San Francisco) or you find mounds at your local grocery store, they are ubiquitous.

I bet you’re wondering what the objectively best way to prepare them is. Well, look no further. My Olive OilPoached Early Girl Tomatoes are transformative and may become your new summer staple. They might even make you question why you’ve ever cooked a tomato any other way.

I’m not usually so hyperbolic. But there are actually 20,000 reasons to love an oliveoil poached tomato, especially an Early Girl, one of my favorite tomato varieties. One of them is how showstopping they are right out of the oven: jewellike red spheres coated in extravirgin olive oil (a lot of it). Small bubbles rise from the bottom of the pan, effervescing. The superiority extends beyond the visual. Gently cooking these tomatoes in flavorful olive oil takes an already special ingredient, the Early Girl tomato, and concentrates its sweetness without blowing it out into a tomato sauce — which is a great way to preserve tomatoes but not the objective here.

Instead we want fresh tomatoes that are just cooked through. Tender enough to eat with a fork but still maintaining the tomato’s architecture. They’re not mushy, but plump and glistening, luxurious. Think of them as caviar, but tomatoes. Think of them as perfectly cooked beans, ones you didn’t mash into a puree. The preparation is also a chameleon in its myriad of uses. The poached tomatoes can substitute for raw tomatoes in a salad, like a classic caprese, and can also be heated up and tossed in an herbforward pasta dish.

In this week’s recipe, I suggest — and truly it’s just a suggestion, because the ways to use these tomatoes are endless — making a light “salad” with crisp cucumbers and tangy labneh. Other ways you might enjoy them are at breakfast with fried eggs, or forksmushed and spread on thickcut toast. In the afternoon you could take it further with more garlic for the best bruschetta, or pressed into a sandwich for the ultimate BLT.

In San Francisco we’re plagued (blessed?) by chilly summer evenings. A brothy soup with white beans, basil, a little chile oil and these tomatoes plopped right in is the perfect remedy (celebration?).

There’s a little work involved. I do ask you to blanch the tomatoes, but it’s worth it. The blanching makes them easier to peel and the exposed flesh is easier to season. Without the skins, they’re able to assimilate the flavors of the other ingredients, plus you get rid of the bitterness of the cooked skins.

And yes, it’s a lot of olive oil, but don’t worry, because what you end up with is a deeply scented elixir that has taken on the essences of the orange, garlic and tomato. I recommend dipping bread into it or reusing it to make this recipe again and again: to make vinaigrettes or any other recipe calling for great flavored olive oil.

I call for Early Girls because they tend to be the perfect smalltomedium size for this recipe and have a wonderful concentration of flavor. Also, as their name denotes, they are available now, earlier in the summer tomato season.

Farms like Tomatero and Dirty Girl, both in Santa Cruz County, have dryfarmed versions grown just on the edge of the fog line. They are more flavorful than their traditionally farmed cousins because the plant “takes in a more concentrated drink (of water and minerals), making for a tomato with very high acid and high sugar content,” Joe Schirmer of Dirty Girl Produce told me recently.

Of course, you can use other tomato varieties, such as heirloom, vine ripened, beefsteak or Campari, to make this recipe, but make sure they are all similar in size and that you adjust the cooking times. Smaller tomatoes — shorter cooking time. Larger — longer.

If I’m being honest, sometimes I don’t like to follow cooking times. I’m a little freespirited in that way, so I have another cue to look for doneness here. It’s one I learned at Zuni Cafe from chefowner Gilbert Pilgram. While the tomatoes are poaching, he’d say to look for those little Champagne bubbles, the ones that rise from the bottom. Once you see them, take the tomatoes out, still covered, and let residual heat carry them over to the perfect doneness. It’s also the perfect moment to pop open that cold one.