Seasonal Star:The Tomato

Seasonal Star of the issue... All About Tomatoes!

You can’t think about summer in the Mediterranean and not think about tomatoes. Tomatoes have become a staple ingredient in Maltese, southern Italian, Spanish and French cuisine, however this hasn’t always been the case. Tomatoes along with their cousins potatoes and chillies only made their way to the Med from the New World a few hundred years ago and they were vastly different to the tomatoes we eat today.

The tomato plant and berry (yes tomatoes are actually berries), are native to central America, more specifically Mexico and come in hundreds of strange and wonderful varieties, colours and flavours. So when Columbus and his crew arrived in Mexico they were so impressed at how well these crops grew they decided to bring a few of them back down to Europe, just a little add on, they also brought with them potatoes, corn, pumpkin, squash, chillies, vanilla, chocolate and a bunch of other exotic fruit and veg. At this point the tomato plant had shaken up Europe. People were petrified of it as we only had a few edible nightshade species in Europe at the time, mainly aubergines. The rest of the nightshade that grew, like Belladonna and deadly Nightshade, were, and still are, very toxic and were known to kill those who ate them.

Now Belladonna and Nightshade look very similar to the tomato plant, and their fruits - although smaller, are almost identical in both shape and colour. This didn’t help the reputation of tomatoes at the time, and horticulturists only grew them for their exotic reputation, but never for food as they were still considered to be toxic. However, they spread around the high courts of Europe at the time and the fruits decorated the table of exotic feasts and banquets. The first tomato varieties to arrive weren’t red as we know them but more of a yellow-golden colour, giving rise to its original Italian & French names, Pomodoro and Pomme d’ór (the golden apple). In Malta we also took over part of this tradition and originally named it Tuffieh ta’ Adam ( Adam’s apple) referring to the forbidden apple Adam had eaten from in the Bible. This was then abbreviated to the much simpler ‘Tadam’. Spain however kept true to the Aztec name Tomato or Tomate.

It's only from the early 19th century that we began seeing recipes using tomatoes. One of the first being a sauce that was used to create the first Pizza for Princess Margherita of Italy. For 400 years, tomatoes grew in the Mediterranean climate in different terroirs, giving rise to new varieties and genotypes. Tomatoes began filling up with new chemical compounds like lycopene and lutein, giving rise to a very red tomato. Colder climates gave rise to new mutations like green and purple and the yellow tomato began to change as time went by.

“Don’t store tomatoes in a fridge as any cold temperatures cause some of the flavour compounds to disappear.”

The red tomato however became the favourite, not because they’re sweeter, (they are actually less sweet then the yellow varieties), but because psychologically we are drawn to the red colour in food because it indicates sweetness meaning a more enjoyable taste. In fact nowadays tomatoes have been bred for a consistent red colouration rather than for flavour, so much so that tomatoes aren’t recommended for home preservation, and any tomato product without preservatives is considered unsafe as a shelf stable food. It used to be safe up until 20 years ago, before which tomatoes had enough acid and sugar to be completely shelf stable once processed. Further to this, tomatoes used to contain up to 250 flavour compounds with high amounts of furaneol and ionone, the same compounds that give roses, raspberries and strawberries their flavour. Nowadays most tomatoes contain less than 200 flavour compounds due to selective breeding for colouration and yield. You can still find very flavourful tomato varieties, heirloom varieties as an example have undergone very little change and thus are usually much more flavoursome. Tomato plants are fascinating in the world of flavour sciences, they’re carnivorous for one, their little hairs on the stem and leaves attract insects who drink the toxic sap and die right onto the soil, fertilising the plant with important nutrients like nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, which then bind to the flavour compounds in the fruit giving them a more pronounced flavour. That’s why greenhouse tomatoes or nonorganic tomatoes don’t taste as good, and that’s why tomatoes grown under a volcano are so well renowned for their flavour. Volcanoes tend to release loads of sulphur into the surrounding soils, those sulphur compounds then bind to sulphuric based compounds that give tomatoes their meatiness, that’s why San Marzano are so good. In either case, tomatoes are delicious. They are the perfect balance of sweet, sour and bitter, and are jam-packed with umami making them even more tasty. Just please don’t store tomatoes in a fridge as any cold temperatures cause some of the flavour compounds to disappear.

Finally, we can't forget the leaves of the tomatoes which are brimming with a unique compound called tomatine which gives tomatoes this super fresh aroma. But that’s not the interesting part - by adding just a few tomato leaves to your cooking, you can naturally reduce your body’s cholesterol. Cooking the leaves extracts tomatine, and when this compound is ingested, it binds to cholesterol in the bloodstream and removes any excess! Be sure to collect a few tomato leaves to add to your next tomato sauce!

pg 21

JULIA RIPARD

THE CLASSIC BLOODY MARY pg 34

JULIA RIPARD

WHIPPED TOFU GARLIC DIP WITH

ROASTED CHERRY TOMATO pg 60

JULIA RIPARD

PANZANELLA

The Classic

BLOODY MARY

Makes: 2 cocktails – Prep time: 5 minutes Ingredients (per serving) 1 shot vodka, 200ml of tomato juice, A cups worth of ice, Juice of 1/2 lemon, A few drops tabasco

Method: Fill the glasses with ice, add a shot of vodka and tomato juice in each. Season with Worcestershire and Tabasco sauce, a pinch of celery salt, and squeeze half a lemon in each. Finish with a pinch of black pepper, and serve with a stick of celery.

Tip: You can wet the rim of the glass and coat in celery salt as well for added flavour! 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce 1 tsp celery salt 2 celery sticks tops Pinch of black pepper