Fresh tomatoes are good only in season and marvelous only at the height of the season,” wrote Richard Olney in “Simple French Food.”
Just in case you haven’t noticed, tomatoes are pretty darn marvelous right now. Big, fire-engine red fruit (botanically they are, indeed, a fruit, but legally a vegetable) are hanging heavy on the vine, waiting to be plucked and used as whim suggests. More than any other food, tomatoes are the edible icons that signify summer. They’re a celebration of all that is good about the season–their aroma, the essence of heat and earth, their luscious flavor is the concentrated taste of pure sunshine.
It’s unthinkable to imagine August meals without them: no tomato and onion salads, no fresh tomato sauces spooned over pasta, no sassy salsas, no BLTs. But of course, that will never happen. Once shunned and purported to be deadly, tomatoes now are the third most popular vegetable in the country, eclipsed only by the more prosaic potatoes and lettuce.
Beyond the never-ending linguistic issue of “you say tomato, I say tohmahto,” there’s quite a bit to know about tomatoes. Their lore, their uses and even the lingering myths that surround them offer a colorful and oddly fascinating look into a small pocket of American folk history
Andrew F. Smith easily qualifies as the major-domo of tomato history. He’s the author of “The Tomato in America: Early History, Culture and Cookery” (University of South Carolina Press, $24.95), the first book to home in on the Lycopersicon genus that embraces tomatoes.
Smith steadfastly insists he’s not a tomato-head, but there’s evidence to suggest otherwise. He gleefully admits that he’s pored over more than 50,000 books and articles on the fruit that has, at various times, been called the love apple, golden apple or just plain poison. He calls tomatoes his hobby, says he likes to eat them and loves to talk about them.
On his last visit to Chicago, Smith had the rapt attention of the Culinary Historians of Chicago, sharing his delight in the subject with about 60 guests who appeared downright fascinated by the botanical minutia.
Tomatoes enjoy the distinction of being one of the few foods that are truly native to the new world, an issue that wasn’t fully resolved until the mid-20th Century, Smith writes. Current wisdom says that they originated in the coastal highlands of western South America and somehow migrated to Central America, where they found in the Mayans their first culinary explorers.
The conquest of Mexico in 1519 moved them eastward to Europe. The conquering Spaniards were quick to pass along their tasty prize. The most fortuitous landing spot was Italy, where the warm Mediterranean sun and a native sense of culinary adventure allowed the tomato to flourish. Soon, pomodoros–golden apples–became a staple of Italian cuisine, appreciated on the one hand for their taste and on the other for their reputed aphrodisiacal qualities.
England, alas, was not nearly so accommodating, Smith notes. Early tomato paintings in the College of Physicians gardens were deemed to be “of ranke and stinking savour.” This taint was just a short step away from “poisonous,” a blasphemy that followed the tomato around with the tenacity of a hungry dog for about 200 years.
Despite their poisonous reputation, tomatoes routinely were planted throughout colonial America, even making their way to Illinois gardens by the early 1800s. Whether because settlers needed to use whatever food there was, or because of a lack of deadly evidence after all, no one ever died from eating them–tomatoes eventually moved into American kitchens, cookbooks and soon after, medicine cabinets.
For a brief stint in the 1830s, tomatoes enjoyed a cure-all reputation. Tomato pills were touted to ease everything–from the most pernicious cases of cholera to the common cold. Whether they worked didn’t seem to matter as much as the fact that a couple of clever marketers made a tidy profit. But the food-as-medicine furor soon died, leaving the tomato to do what it does best: feed and delight with its seasonal charms.
Then in 1893, it sat at the heart of one of the stranger cases to be ruled on by the Supreme Court–is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable?
By design, it is indisputably a fruit because it develops from an ovary But form follows function, ruled Associate Justice Horace Gray after an importer insisted on the fruit classification so his West Indian tomatoes would be exempt from a tariff imposed on vegetables.
Wrote Gray, (T)hese are vegetables which are grown in kitchen gardens. which, whether: eaten cooked or are like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips…usually served at dinner. in or after the soup, fish, or meat which constitute the principal part of the repast, and not, like fruits, generally as dessert.” His ruling stands today.
There is much, much more to know of tomatoes, even well beyond the bits of wisdom offered by Smith. But in the end, there’s really only one thing you need to know about summer tomatoes. Never, ever refrigerate them, a folly that’s sure to ruin them beyond repair. They will become mushy and flavorless.
SUMMER TOMATOES ALL YEAR LONG
Tomatoes have a lamentably short season, but they never really go away. In January, just as in July, supermarkets gladly offer them to anyone who cares to take them home. Oddly enought, people actually buy winter tomatoes, despite their pallid looks, cottony texture and startling shortage of taste.
We’ve become so accustomed to having practically any food available year-round that the inviolate order of seasonality has all but disappeared. The strategy works pretty well for some foods. Chilean grapes and Mexican asparagus, for example, are fine solutions for the dearth of locally grown offerings in wintertime. But to many minds and palates, winter tomatoes largely are a travesty.
Happily, there are several ways to preserve the home-grown season that sidestep the rigamarole of hot-water canning.
– Oven-drying is one solution, particularly well-suited to red and yellow cherry tomatoes and plum tomatoes. (See recipe on this page.) The dried tomatoes can be stored in the refrigerator for several weeks. They also can be frozen for 5 ot 6 months. Although they will lose quite a bit of their texture on thawing, they are ideal for cooking purposes.
– Freezing is another convenient option. Sauces, such as the seed-and-all tomato sauce, freeze quite well. Place them in heavy plastic containers with tight fitting lids, leaving an inch of headroom at the top.
Some cooks swear by freezing whole tomatoes. This works, providing the thawed tomatoes will be used in cooked sauces. However, we found that oven-drying worked every bit as well and had the added edge of taking up far less freezer space.
T’MATA DATA
– One medium tomato weighs 5 to 6 ounces; large one up to 10 ounces, although some super specimens weigh a pound or even more.
– Assuming its a 6-ouncer, a tomato has about 26 calories, 1 gram of protein, 0.4 gram fat, zilch cholesterol, 1,000 international unit of vitamin A, 28 of vitamin C traces of the B vitmin and 300 IUs of potassium.
– A medium tomato, seeded and chopped, measures about 2/3 cup.
– There are about 30 cherry tomato to pint and about 5 to 6 plum tomatoes to the pound
– Yellow and orange tomatoes are interchageable with the red ones although they tend to less acidic and milder.
– To peel tomatoes, drop them into a pan of rapidly boiling water. Leave them in about 10 seconds or, slightly longer if they are firm. Drain immediately and hold them under cold water, remove the core then slip off the skin. To remove the seeds cut the tomato in half crosswide. Grasping it genty in the palm of your hand, squeeze the tomato halves to release the seeds and juice.
– Never refrigerate tomatoes, unless they’ve already been cut open. Store them on the counter stem-side up.
SEEDS-AND-ALL TOMATO SAUCE
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Yield: 3 1/4 cups
With the seeds and bits of skin left, this is a rustic sauce with a sturdy character. The skin can be removed after the tomatoes are blackened for a more refined finish.
3 pounds vine-ripened tomatoes
1 to 2 cloves garlic, unpeeled
1 branch fresh basil
1/2 teaspoon salt
Pinch crushed red pepper flakes
1. Place a large cast-iron skillet over high heat. Add the tomatoes and cook until they are well blackened, turning them over periodically. It’s OK if their skin bursts and they don’t blacken all over. During the last few minutes, add the garlic cloves and cook them until they also are charred. Remove the pan from the heat and let cool.
2. Working over a bowl to catch the juices, remove core from tomatoes and roughly break up tomatoes. Peel the garlic. Transfer tomatoes and their juices and the garlic to a non-aluminum saucepan; add the basil, salt and pepper flakes. Heat to a simmer then cook gently, uncovered, until slightly thickened, 45 to 50 minutes.
3. Transfer to a food processor and blend until smooth. The sauce freezes well and can be served hot or at room temperature.
Nutrition information per cup:
Calories…..90 Fat……………1 g Cholesterol…..0 mg
Sodium…365 mg Carbohydrates….20 g Protein……….4 g
DOUBLE-T BLT
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 10 minutes
Yield: 4 servings
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup finely chopped oven-dried tomatoes, see recipe
1/4 cup shredded fresh basil or cilantro
Pinch ground red pepper or dash hot pepper sauce
12 sticks thick-sliced smoked bacon
8 slices sesame semolina or other firm bread
4 leaves lettuce, such as leaf or Bibb
2 large tomatoes, thinly sliced
8 fresh basil leaves or clantro sprigs
1. Mix mayonnaise, dried tomatoes, shredded basl and ground red pepper in small bowl.
2. Cook bacon in large skillet or on a foil-lined sheet in a 375-degree oven until crisped as desired. Drain well.
3. Spread mayonnaise mixture over each bread slice. Top 4 of the slices with a lettuce leaf; divide tomato slices over lettuce. Top each with 3 strips of bacon and 2 basil leaves. Cover the top slice of bread and serve.
Nutrition information per sandwich:
Calories…..500 Fat……………35 g Cholesterol…..30 mg
Sodium….865 mg Carbohydrates…..38 g Protein……….14 g
OVEN-DRIED TOMATOES
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Drying time: 6 hours or more
Yield: About 2 cups
Use these intensely-flavored tomatoes for everything from a quck-cooked sauce or salsa to pizza or bruschetta topping. The tomatoes also can be dried on a very low gas or charcoal grill (use an oven thermometer to gauge temperature). The recipe doubles and triples easily.
2 pints cherry tomatoes or 12 plum tomatoes or 8 medium-sized round tomatoes
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
1. Heat oven to 200 degrees. Cut tomatoes in half through the stem end. Lightly oil a foil-lined baking sheet. Place tomatoes on sheet, cut side up, in a single layer. Sprinkle lightly with salt.
2. Put into the middle of the oven and check occasionally until tomatoes are dried as desired, usually about 6 hours for cherry tomatoes, 8 hours for small plum tomatoes and up to overnight for the round tomatoes. Cool and pack in covered container and refrigerate up to 1 week or freeze up to several months.
Nutrition information per cup:
Calories…..80 Fat……………1 g Cholesterol…..0 mg
Sodium….35 mg Carbohydrates….17 g Protein……….3 g
WARM TOMATO VINAIGRETTE
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Marinating time: 10 minutes
Yield: About 2 1/2 servings
This versatile sauce, adapted from “The Good Cook’s Book of Oil and Vinegar” by Michele Anna Jordan, can be used atop grilled poultry, fish and shellfish, tossed with pasta and spooned atop omelets.
1 pound vine-ripeded tomatoes
6 to 8 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 large shallots, minced
2 small cloves garlic, minced
3 to 4 tablespoons white-wine vinegar
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tablespoon minced fresh basil
2 tablespoons minced fresh herbs other than basil, such as a mix of tarragon, chives and rosemary
1/4 teaspoon salt or to taste
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1. Peel tomatoes by putting them into a pot of rapidly boiling water 10 seconds. Drain and rinse under cold water. Core, then slip off skins. Cut in half crosswise and squeeze gently to remove the seeds. Dice the tomatoes and set aside.
2. Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a large skillet. Add shallots and cook, stirring often, 2 minutes. Add garlic and continue to cook until both begin to soften, 2 minutes longer.
3. Add tomatoes and cook just until they are heated through, 1 to 2 minutes. Remove from heat and add remaining oil to taste, vinegar, lemon juice, herbs, salt and pepper. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Nutrition information per tablespoon:
Calories…..20 Fat……………2 g Cholesterol…..0 mg
Sodium….15 mg Carbohydrates…..1 g Protein……….0 g
