Eating supermarket tomatoes raw is like eating crushed ice - flavourless and crunchy. But they can be saved! Various tomato recipes, plus one for Stuffed Tomatoes
Actually Armenian and Alentejo tomatoes are up there with the best. https://www.winedisclosures.com/amphora-wines. I'm off to Azerbaijan tomorrow to see what theirs are like. For me, its interesting that the area where so many plants/crops/animals originated, also does the New World's best plants so well too.
I've had some EXCEPTIONAL tomato salads this summer, taking advantage of peak season. One, with chunks of tomato, fat wedges of ripe peaches, and a nam pla vinaigrette will live on in my heart till I die.
I'm finding it hard to tongue-picture peaches with tomato! Similar in texture, what do they bring one another? But I suppose the nam pla vinaigrette would tie them together. (Mind you, I could drink nam pla vinaigrette neat with no salad.)
SAME! I'd eat my own foot with a nam pla vinaigrette. It was the pop of sweet versus acid that worked, with both the peaches and the tomatoes supplying their own versions of each. I ordered it because I didn't get how it worked, then went back two days later to have it again!
Such a coincidence! I've just been emailed directly by a Tabled subscriber saying:
"A subject dear to my heart. I long for a good tomato -
Here in Oregon, plenty are grown but the nights here are cool and dry. The tomatoes are tasteless.
In DC? Those hot humid nights produced wonderful (homegrown) tomatoes.
I learned from a dear French/British friend and mentor how to serve tomatoes: cut up (largish chunks), salt (generous), olive oil (a drizzle). Room temperature. Eat with baguette (there will be loads of juice.) Mind you, this was made in the south of France decades ago and the tomatoes were wonderful.
Now with less flavorful tomatoes I make tomato and peach salad." (I can't upload her mouth-watering photo).
Preach! Tomatoes, like you say, are just the perfect of example of this phenomenon — that, by wanting anything at anytime, we sacrifice the flavors that we crave.
I wish it were as simple as consumer demand, but honestly, I’m not sure most folks even know what they’re missing — or care. I’ve had your “chicken” moment before with vegetables from my own garden — “this is the best tomato/cucumber/zucchini I’ve ever had!” but even when it can be just as easy to stop at a farmers market and only buy vegetables in season, the same people continue to buy bland veg at the supermarket year round.
And, don’t even get me started on the fact that I can buy a “bag” of prepped produce and have it last, forgotten in my fridge, for months without any visible ill effects!
Oh, that bag of prepped produce! While there are cooks who have to rely on pre-cut veg, meat and fruit because they suffer from physical challenges, people without any who are economically comfortable enough to avoid what they may see as hard graft in the kitchen then let their stash deteriorate before they use it leave me unimpressed. In the US, it's reckoned to be between 30 and 40 percent of food purchased. You're right that it's sad just how many people have never been able to discover what full flavours can mean, once the province of everyone from all economic backgrounds but now limited to people lucky enough to grow their own or buy from small producers. 'Progress' and industrial advances have resulted in us losing so much that our grandparents took for granted.
I've started using frozen chopped shallots instead of keeping onions to hand. Living alone I often find myself with produce past its best, and frozen shallots have been a real game changer. It also means that when I return from an adventure I can make supper without having to wrestle with the shops.
There are good reasons for bagged vegetables - I have frozen peas, and sometimes frozen broad beans and spinach. (Frozen artichoke hearts are tasteless...) But my freezer is an under-counter one the size of a suitcase. Which I'm glad about or it would be filled with dim sum and mini Magnums.
Frozen carrots and broccoli go all woody and weird, but peas, sweet potato, and corn are all freezer staples in my house. And cubes of holy basil and pandan, because they're both hard to find fresh in the UK (even in London!).
This was the perfect thing to read whilst eating the last of my home grown tomatoes on local sourdough for breakfast!
There's is nothing to beat the joy in a home-grown tomato! The complete opposite in every way from a supermarket ball. I envy you your breakfast!
You lucky, lucky thing!
I’m with you on Georgian tomatoes. From initial bite chasing down wine on first tour in 2012
Georgian tomatoes AND Georgian wine?? Close to heaven.
Actually Armenian and Alentejo tomatoes are up there with the best. https://www.winedisclosures.com/amphora-wines. I'm off to Azerbaijan tomorrow to see what theirs are like. For me, its interesting that the area where so many plants/crops/animals originated, also does the New World's best plants so well too.
I've had some EXCEPTIONAL tomato salads this summer, taking advantage of peak season. One, with chunks of tomato, fat wedges of ripe peaches, and a nam pla vinaigrette will live on in my heart till I die.
I'm finding it hard to tongue-picture peaches with tomato! Similar in texture, what do they bring one another? But I suppose the nam pla vinaigrette would tie them together. (Mind you, I could drink nam pla vinaigrette neat with no salad.)
SAME! I'd eat my own foot with a nam pla vinaigrette. It was the pop of sweet versus acid that worked, with both the peaches and the tomatoes supplying their own versions of each. I ordered it because I didn't get how it worked, then went back two days later to have it again!
Such a coincidence! I've just been emailed directly by a Tabled subscriber saying:
"A subject dear to my heart. I long for a good tomato -
Here in Oregon, plenty are grown but the nights here are cool and dry. The tomatoes are tasteless.
In DC? Those hot humid nights produced wonderful (homegrown) tomatoes.
I learned from a dear French/British friend and mentor how to serve tomatoes: cut up (largish chunks), salt (generous), olive oil (a drizzle). Room temperature. Eat with baguette (there will be loads of juice.) Mind you, this was made in the south of France decades ago and the tomatoes were wonderful.
Now with less flavorful tomatoes I make tomato and peach salad." (I can't upload her mouth-watering photo).
The universe is clearly trying to tell you something!
Preach! Tomatoes, like you say, are just the perfect of example of this phenomenon — that, by wanting anything at anytime, we sacrifice the flavors that we crave.
I wish it were as simple as consumer demand, but honestly, I’m not sure most folks even know what they’re missing — or care. I’ve had your “chicken” moment before with vegetables from my own garden — “this is the best tomato/cucumber/zucchini I’ve ever had!” but even when it can be just as easy to stop at a farmers market and only buy vegetables in season, the same people continue to buy bland veg at the supermarket year round.
And, don’t even get me started on the fact that I can buy a “bag” of prepped produce and have it last, forgotten in my fridge, for months without any visible ill effects!
Oh, that bag of prepped produce! While there are cooks who have to rely on pre-cut veg, meat and fruit because they suffer from physical challenges, people without any who are economically comfortable enough to avoid what they may see as hard graft in the kitchen then let their stash deteriorate before they use it leave me unimpressed. In the US, it's reckoned to be between 30 and 40 percent of food purchased. You're right that it's sad just how many people have never been able to discover what full flavours can mean, once the province of everyone from all economic backgrounds but now limited to people lucky enough to grow their own or buy from small producers. 'Progress' and industrial advances have resulted in us losing so much that our grandparents took for granted.
I've started using frozen chopped shallots instead of keeping onions to hand. Living alone I often find myself with produce past its best, and frozen shallots have been a real game changer. It also means that when I return from an adventure I can make supper without having to wrestle with the shops.
There are good reasons for bagged vegetables - I have frozen peas, and sometimes frozen broad beans and spinach. (Frozen artichoke hearts are tasteless...) But my freezer is an under-counter one the size of a suitcase. Which I'm glad about or it would be filled with dim sum and mini Magnums.
Frozen carrots and broccoli go all woody and weird, but peas, sweet potato, and corn are all freezer staples in my house. And cubes of holy basil and pandan, because they're both hard to find fresh in the UK (even in London!).