Now, that’s a tomato!!

With Valentine’s Day just gone, it seems appropriate that my thoughts turn to the love apple. Pomme d’amour means literally ‘apple of love’ – the French believed the tomato had aphrodisiac powers, hence the name. Aphrodisiac or not, I’m completely in love with solanum lycopersicum 😍 There are a few staples I’d miss desperately in the kitchen but tomatoes, along with garlic and onions, are right up there at the top of the list (olives and their oil, chili and cheese will feature another day …)

The birth of the Allan Street Flower and Veggie Collective is still a recent geological event and our kitchen garden is very much a work in progress. We’re currently using the unassumingly sized plot the previous custodians of the Collective put in place and while this has limited us on both space and soil quality, we’ve managed to cobble together a passable crop of summer vegetables. As you’ll have noticed from my recent posts, there’s barely a day gone by that I haven’t been figuring out what to do with a harvest of tomatoes, zucchinis or cucumbers. That’s not even considering the lettuce, spring onions, radishes, silverbeet and herbs – the slightly more polite summer crops which will wait patiently in the garden for a while and don’t demand to be dealt with as a matter of urgency. Tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers on the other hand have to be picked when they’re ready, not you, and they don’t respond well to being kept waiting; neglected specimens can go yellow, go hollow, go mouldy or exhibit a variety of other tantrum-like behaviours. We haven’t had true glut levels of these veggies so big-batch bottling wasn’t on the cards, but there’s been enough to require a strong creative streak in dealing with them.

Relish in the making

Relish in the jar!

While the tomatoes have kept me on my toes – protecting them from opportunistic blackbirds that hang around the veggie patch, as well as turning them into something useful and delicious in a timely fashion – I’m not complaining. Have I mentioned that I simply LOVE tomatoes? Raw, cooked, dried … in any guise at all. I’ve already shared here the ecstasy of the tastiest semi-dried tomatoes in the world (well, in our part of the world, anyway!) But we’ve also turned out some delicious tomato relish – an old favourite I’ve been making for nearly twenty years and which has been hugely popular when spread under the cheese part of grilled cheese, on toast or muffins. A marvellous zucchini, tomato and eggplant bake with garlic and parmesan, has found its way onto our dinner menu a number of times, and a few tomatoes on the verge of going renegade (aka over-ripe) have been chopped and tossed into stews, casseroles and pasta sauces. A garden fresh tomato soup fittingly graced the lunch table on Valentine’s Day and was a hit. Light and delicate, fragrant like summer itself, it was quickly slurped up with warm slices of freshly baked wholemeal bread, decadently slathered with butter. There’s more in the freezer so we can recall the scent of warmer days when winter wraps its cool grip around us soon.

We’ve revelled in the sensuality of sweet, juicy tomatoes in salads, on sandwiches and savoured whole as snacks; the only way to enjoy bruschetta is when the tomatoes are as succulent as these are.  Quickly sautéed, they brighten up a plateful of bacon and eggs for breakfast. Whether the French were right or not about the aphrodisiac effect, I’ve certainly had a long-standing love affair with this amazing fruit (or vegetable, depending on which theory you subscribe to).

We once lived for two years on the small Pacific island of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia, and one of the greatest hardships we endured was a paucity of fresh food. Particularly fruit and vegetables. And above all, tomatoes… Virtually every consumable arrived on the island by container ship. The interval between ships was meant to be four or five weeks but there was usually something that stretched this out: whether it was the weather, or delays over unpaid port taxes in places along the way, six or eight weeks regularly passed between the ships sailing in. We still reminisce about the great onion drought, the long potato shortage, the-time-the-milk-dried-up (UHT only, of course, no fresh!) There was great excitement on-island when the vessel was finally spied nestled up against the wharf in the port, and the island grapevine (aka the expat phone lines) sprang to life to pass on the news, “The ship’s in! The ship’s in!”

As the chief gatherer of nuts and berries, I would leap into action and head to the store that carried the best and biggest selection of the “fresh” food; we quickly learned roughly how much time elapsed between first sighting of the ship, and when the produce hit the shelves. And you needed to be there at the shelf-hitting, to ensure an early pick at what was on offer. Ship day entailed substantial time dedicated to the gathering process. A full half day could be spent in buying and bringing home the precious cargo, then preparing it all in ways that would make it last as long as possible between ships. You could tell what stage we were at in the ship schedule by the “salads” being served at the local eating establishments: a recently arrived vessel meant we had lettuce, tomato, cucumber; half way through we were back to cabbage (lasts longer) and cucumber (one of the few veg grown on-island); by the time the next ship was due the salad was macaroni pasta with thousand island dressing!!

On reaching our stores, the produce had already been a long time picked. Usually originating from the US – sometimes Hawaii – it spent a minimum of three or four weeks at sea before we saw it. Much of it was well past its prime when it arrived but that didn’t diminish our lust for it! Every time I handed over seven or eight dollars for three or four watery, tough and tasteless tomatoes, I would head home with high hopes. And every time I tasted one of those poor, sad excuses for a tomato I vowed I wouldn’t waste the money next time. But I always did …

On our one brief trip home during our island time I stopped by the tomatoes in the supermarket and lovingly held one to my nose to enjoy the sweet, fruity aroma. My son Jake was mortified. Looking around us he hissed in a stage whisper, “Mum! What are you doing??!!” I told him I just wanted to smell the tomato. “Are you going to buy it?” he asked. I told him no, as we couldn’t take it back to the island with us anyway. “Then please … put it down,” he begged. To his teenage credit, he stopped short of physically dragging me away from the display…

A few months before we departed Pohnpei for good we were invited to the home of some US friends, to share in our first ever Thanksgiving meal, a pot-luck. It was a gathering of interesting folks from diverse backgrounds. And the really delightful thing about all pot-lucks on the island was that everyone brought along whatever special foods they’d been saving up, to share. So, that Thanksgiving we had amazing Alaskan hot-smoked salmon someone had just brought back with them from a trip to North America. Someone else brought along a decadently oozy full wheel of camembert, and there was a block of pungently mature cheddar cheese. Which the resident dog got to before proceedings really got going; needless to say the dog spent the rest of the day locked away, in disgrace. But the pièce de résistance came in the round, red form of a tomato.

The island’s Chinese embassy was experimenting with a market garden and Konrad, Pohnpei’s agricultural expert and officer-in-charge of quarantine, had been given a single ripe, luscious sample which he brought along to share, in the spirit of the island pot-luck. When he produced this gorgeous apparition and placed it, in all its rosy fecundity, in the centre of the serving table I swear there was an audible gasp from the gathering. In hushed awe every last one of us assembled around the table, as Konrad wielded a super-sharp knife and deftly carved the tomato into wafer thin slivers – one each for the 30 or so thanks-givers, who were by then giving extra thanks. It tasted like pure nectar and the fancier food items lay forgotten as we savoured that tiny slice of heaven. When everyone had slaked their desire there were two slices left over and I couldn’t help but gaze at them and wonder if they were to be wasted for the sake of politeness. The MOTH came over, put a gentle hand under my elbow and began guiding me away. “Step away from the tomato,” was the unspoken message. But I couldn’t just abandon those delectable leftovers and, made bold by long months of real tomato deprivation I went to Konrad and, in the fashion of Oliver Twist, asked for more 🙂

All shapes and sizes

I’m already dreaming up ways we might extend our future tomato growing seasons here at the Collective, and not looking forward to the totally unromantic store bought tomatoes we’ll have to face when the current one ends. I waxed lyrical to the MOTH today, about the old Italian way of eating only what’s in season or what you’ve preserved from the season. We’re still a long way off being able to provide for ourselves year-round but with so many pommes d’amour in my recent diet, I’m totally in love with the idea of it!