Not so seasonal, I agree. I’m not out to encourage you to buy lots of imported fruit and veg. But I am out to bang a drum for tomatoes, wonder ingredient without which…no tomato soup, no pizza (or not much) and of course no tomato ketchup.
While we are still working our way through the leftovers of that import from the Americas, turkey, spare a thought for tomatoes too. Another of those ingredients we take for granted, tomatoes also made their way over around that time – and Europe certainly took to them with gusto.
If I remember rightly, they were initially considered poisonous. There is a connection with the nightshade family, so fair enough to proceed with caution, but thankfully, people did proceed.
As a child, my parents would grow tomatoes in growbags – preferably on a window seat if they could. I remember the window seat in their bedroom having two if not three growbags on it, making it hard to see out, but offering great conditions for the tomatoes.
They stopped after a while. We always seemed to be on holiday when the crop came on – and so we missed the best of them. But even so, I know what a tomato should smell like. I love the spidery vines they grow on, the feeling of slight resistance as you twist them to separate the tomato off.
One summer, I went to Russia and the Ukraine as part of an organised trip. The tail end of the trip involved a long train ride from pretty much one end of the Ukraine to the other, getting ourselves back to Kiev to fly home. After 18 hours on the train, even the train lovers among us were starting to wish for stable ground – and something decent to eat.
We arrived early in the morning, and went to a community house to breakfast and freshen up, before getting the flight later in the day. Breakfast was simple: bread, fried onions and potatoes, and tomatoes. To those of us who had had little sleep, this was manna. Especially the tomatoes.
Even now, I still wonder if that was the best meal I ever had. The freshness of the ingredients, the heartiness of the other ingredients against the juice, the fragrance and the roundness of flavour of the tomato.
I could spend much longer making my way back around my food memories that include tomatoes. But I’ve been making a batch of red sauce today aka a thick tomato sauce with added red pepper and chicken stock.
This one comes from tinned tomatoes, and is lifted from The New York Cook Book – it’s the Easy On The Diet sauce. It combines so well with many things, particularly sausages and pasta. Just the thing to stock the freezer with.
My final note to end on is that tomatoes have also been known as love apples. I think that sums up all I need to say.