Fruit of the vine
Aug. 12th, 2010 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pallas_athenaI have made a salad!
Specifically, a tomato/basil/mozzarella salad. It's August, and all those ingredients are fine and fabulous, especially the tomatoes.
Now, I know that some of you just read that and thought "eeeeyyyyucccchhh." It seems a growing number of my friends are tomato-haters. But this blog is NO STRANGER TO CONTROVERSY, and therefore I shall forge ahead with my paean to the red fruit of summer.
If you're British, I can understand why you'd dislike tomatoes. You'd have grown up knowing the tomato only as a greyish-orange slimy fibrous thing that made your salad soggy and didn't taste like much of anything. I didn't like tomatoes as a kid either, and I have no such excuse: my family grew tomatoes in the back yard in the tropical Washington DC summers. I think I disliked them simply because adults (never trust one) kept saying "eat this, it's good for you." But I liked picking them, and to this day I get weirdly nostalgic at the strange green smell of a tomato vine. I can't think of the smell without thinking of the prickly, slightly furry texture of the vines themselves. I'm trying to think of another example where a plant smells so radically different from the taste of the fruit it produces, but I can't.
For tonight's salad, I used cherry tomatoes. While chopping them I sneakily ate a few, and they were superb, exploding with flavour like tiny cherry bombs. (Do they have cherry bombs in this country? Do they still even exist in the US? They were a large part of my generation's childhood mythos.)
Anyway, yeah, I love tomatoes. I love those huge beefsteak ones that bleed juice as you slice them in half. I love the weirdly-coloured ones: green, yellow, purple, striped! One of the major legacies from my most recent partner is a beautifully simple sauce recipe: tomatoes, basil and lots of olive oil in a saucepan; cook uncovered on high heat until everything liquefies and reduces. I was kind of incredulous about the lack of onions or garlic, but the simple recipe works just fine. In fact, it's perfect in August, because one of the first things I learnt from my family's tomato-growing experience is that come late August, there are a lot of them. This sauce reduces a pot of tomatoes by two-thirds to three-quarters, tastes great and freezes really well.
I will soon be moving to a new flat in a different part of London. Sadly there's no garden, but for the first time I'll have a terrace. Next spring, I will be planting my own tomatoes, and in summer my hands will be covered in green-smelling vine sap. This makes me happier than I can say.
Specifically, a tomato/basil/mozzarella salad. It's August, and all those ingredients are fine and fabulous, especially the tomatoes.
Now, I know that some of you just read that and thought "eeeeyyyyucccchhh." It seems a growing number of my friends are tomato-haters. But this blog is NO STRANGER TO CONTROVERSY, and therefore I shall forge ahead with my paean to the red fruit of summer.
If you're British, I can understand why you'd dislike tomatoes. You'd have grown up knowing the tomato only as a greyish-orange slimy fibrous thing that made your salad soggy and didn't taste like much of anything. I didn't like tomatoes as a kid either, and I have no such excuse: my family grew tomatoes in the back yard in the tropical Washington DC summers. I think I disliked them simply because adults (never trust one) kept saying "eat this, it's good for you." But I liked picking them, and to this day I get weirdly nostalgic at the strange green smell of a tomato vine. I can't think of the smell without thinking of the prickly, slightly furry texture of the vines themselves. I'm trying to think of another example where a plant smells so radically different from the taste of the fruit it produces, but I can't.
For tonight's salad, I used cherry tomatoes. While chopping them I sneakily ate a few, and they were superb, exploding with flavour like tiny cherry bombs. (Do they have cherry bombs in this country? Do they still even exist in the US? They were a large part of my generation's childhood mythos.)
Anyway, yeah, I love tomatoes. I love those huge beefsteak ones that bleed juice as you slice them in half. I love the weirdly-coloured ones: green, yellow, purple, striped! One of the major legacies from my most recent partner is a beautifully simple sauce recipe: tomatoes, basil and lots of olive oil in a saucepan; cook uncovered on high heat until everything liquefies and reduces. I was kind of incredulous about the lack of onions or garlic, but the simple recipe works just fine. In fact, it's perfect in August, because one of the first things I learnt from my family's tomato-growing experience is that come late August, there are a lot of them. This sauce reduces a pot of tomatoes by two-thirds to three-quarters, tastes great and freezes really well.
I will soon be moving to a new flat in a different part of London. Sadly there's no garden, but for the first time I'll have a terrace. Next spring, I will be planting my own tomatoes, and in summer my hands will be covered in green-smelling vine sap. This makes me happier than I can say.