Coping with Tomato Overload
September. This is a special time of year, just right for the Queen of the Garden, the tomato.
So enraptured have we become over this cousin to deadly nightshade that we have cultivated no fewer than 2,700 varieties of tomato, in a rainbow of colors and a seemingly endless assortment of sizes and shapes. Volumes of history have been written about it, Louis Armstrong sang about mispronouncing it, and everyone seems to know that people used to think it was poisonous (some actually are, and the leaves and stalks of most are toxic).
The tomato has been prized for its versatility, cherished for its supposed aphrodisiac qualities, and utilized as a projectile in Vaudeville. Those aerodynamic qualities are still exploited in Buol, Spain, where the last Wednesday in August becomes an orgy of tomato wallowing, ostensibly in honor of the town’s patron saint, San Luis Bertran. Since the fight is usually a “boys vs. girls” affair, it rapidly becomes something of a wet T-shirt contest.
In this country we have come to be a bit more respectful of the tomato, but we do have our moments of degradation. Chief among these is the curious American obsession with eating out of season. This has resulted in those flavorless, mealy pink baseballs that are shipped green from Mexico, force-ripened with ethylene gas in train cars en route to Chicago, then passed off as tomatoes at your local grocery store in February. The tomato is one of those vegetables that, like asparagus, are best eaten during a particular season, and the season is upon us.
Read the whole story at Huffington Post.
When researching the history and lore of a particular food, something I do with perhaps more frequency than the average person, one of my favorite resources to turn to is the late Waverly Root, an American journalist assigned to Paris for most of his career, and his indispensable Food: An Authoritative Visual History and Dictionary of the Foods of the World. And, honestly, how could I not turn to Root when writing about three often overlooked winter vegetables: turnips, parsnips and rutabagas? Despite the fact that in our modern day they play second fiddle to carrots, these three are wonderful, hearty winter fare, delicious in a mash with other root vegetables, in soups and stews, or roasted in the oven until crisp and savory. They are also well appreciated in the lean months because of their long shelf life and low cost.
