Slices home-made bread, slightly stale. Ripe tomatoes cut in half and smeared onto the bread: the juice, pulp and seeds will rub off and remain trapped between the grains of the crumb. Evenly season the moistened surface with salt. Drizzle with olive oil. Take a slice of bread, holding it by the crust, squeeze gently and then release it so that the oil slowly expands all over the surface.
It is of the utmost importance that all the wise people of the world understand that bread and tomato are a fundamental part of the human diet. It is the ultimate sinful dish, because it harbours and simplifies sin, making it accessible to all. A sinful dish because it is an alternative to all that is transcendental, all that becomes dangerously transcendental, when it leads to the culture of denial. Don’t make war but bread and tomatoes. (…) Always and forever. Bread. Tomatoes. Oil. Salt.”
From Recetas immorales, 1988, Manuel Vazquez Montalban