In (further) Praise of Tomatoes
Everybody should love a good tomato fresh-picked from a backyard garden, sweetly tangy and full of juice. Eaten from the hand like an apple, its skin resists just briefly before it bursts and yields its flavor to your tongue. Sliced and sprinkled with a touch of sea salt and some cracked black pepper, they are one of the simplest delicacies known to cuisine, a gourmet accomplishment within the abilities of any cook.
In the foreground is a sliced pink accordian tomato, which grows with a ruffled, dimpled surface. In the background is a purple cherokee, which ripens to a rich, plum color. In the middle are two varieties which, sadly, I cannot identify because my version of gardening tends to have a greater resemblance to gathering, but both came from feral plants in my backyard.
When we ate this plate of tomatoes a month ago, my sister’s friend Chris was over for dinner. He looked at the cherokee tomato and questioned whether it was ripe; it looked a bit green to him. When the plate was before us as our appetizer, he tasted thoughtfully and decided it was his favorite of the four. “Just goes to show you,” he said, “looks can be deceiving. I thought it was going to be unripe and flavorless and instead it’s my favorite.” That something is perfectly round and red, like a page from a coloring book that’s come to life, is no harbinger of a fruit’s epicurean qualities.
What I discovered as I sampled several varieties in sequence and comparison is that two slices from different parts of the same tomato will have slightly different flavors. Once I made the realization, I quickly ceased to be surprised; think about a larger fruit, like a melon, where the difference in flavor between the outer rim and the center is more pronounced and noticeable due to its size. The same principle is at play here, on a smaller scale.
Fresh, ripe, local tomatoes will still be available until around the first frost, at which point the plants get too cold to survive. That’s when any true lover of the fruit goes into a 9-month wait for the rebirth of fresh tomatoes: a gastronomic gestation well worth the wait.