This garden season has seen an unprecedented spike in participants. Were you one of those who restarted your plot during quarantine? As harvest time hits in the summer tomato patch, I hope you’ll have lots of choices piling up on the kitchen counter just aching to become part of the perfect main course, lunchtime snack or party platter.
I’ll bet many of you selected your tomato garden starts earlier this spring with cooking in mind. San Marzano for sauce, a bright-tasting cherry for salads, beefsteaks for that burger, right? That works, of course, and I heartily applaud your dinner-table-oriented strategic thinking.
But which tomato is perfect for which recipe? Are there firm rules? And what if you don’t have two or three perfect beefsteak tomatoes to slice and drape lovingly over huge burgers for this weekend’s neighborhood cookout? What’s a gardener and cook to do?
Break the rules!
Trust me, you always have another option when it comes to tomatoes.
You say tomato, I say pick it and use it for anything, no matter the size, shape, color or job description. Try something you haven’t done—or tasted—in the past. Any tomato can be a paste tomato if you try hard enough. What you need is a great-tasting tomato, not necessarily a particular style, shape or size.
Make a pasta sauce with roasted cherry tomatoes or use a great spicy green tomato salsa on a BLT instead of slivers of your favorite beefsteak. Try an heirloom marmalade or a Roma tomato on sourdough. Just a little creativity and courage can make even the most traditional recipe something wild and new.
That said, the recipes linked to the right have specific types of tomatoes recommended, but you really can use any kind you have!
Copyright ©2024 Edible Ojai & Ventura County. All rights reserved
