Making the most of a tough tomato harvest

Grainews

October 2021.

War contributes to the transportation and appropriation of goods around the globe. For instance, tomatoes were among the plants and animals that ended up in Europe in the unequal exchange of goods, disease, slavery, land theft, and genocide between New World and Old, beginning in 1492 and culminating in1650, called the Columbian Exchange. This event led to the emergence of some remarkable Mediterranean dishes, many centering on the tomato, and making them among the world’s most popular fruit for home gardeners like me. My tomato-growing is bittersweet, knowing the history of the plants.

Tomatoes are fragile. A frost warning for tonight means that I will cover the fruit still hanging on the vine. Not that there’s a lot – this summer has been as disastrous for tomatoes as it has been for most other crops.

I planted thirty plants – among them Black Krim, Sungold, Marzano, Early Girl, Sweet Million, Brandywine, Whippersnapper, yellow-striped Green Zebra, and heritage beefsteak, plus five “mystery plants” purchased from tomato maven and author Sara Williams at her annual Tomatoes for Tanzania sale in Saskatoon.  Because we were flooded in 2011, and my mother’s and grandmother’s garden was eventually covered by a berm that encircles the house to keep ensuing (perhaps unlikely) floods from drowning our old house, most of my gardening takes place in containers and raised beds. The tomatoes inhabit a funky assortment of receptacles adjacent to the herb bed on the north side of the house. They get sun, shade, shelter. I had hopes of a bumper crop.

At her sale, I asked Williams for some tips. On her advice, I made eggshell tea to from crushed eggshells to aid in calcium absorption and reduce the risk of the dreaded blossom stem end rot.

Then the heat dome inflated over western Canada. A heat wave that lasted most of the summer set in, and my tomato plants, by then setting blossoms, began to look stressed. On days that hit upwards of 30C, it became impossible to keep the plants’ water level on an even keel.

A harvest vastly smaller than I expected – albeit with very few incidences of blossom stem end rot – meant that I had to go looking for additional fruit to feed my tomato habit. (Each fall I like to make roasted tomato sauce – more on that in a minute – and my paternal grandmother Doris’s southern Ontario sweet and spicy tomato chili sauce, dynamite with eggs and grilled pork. That recipe another time.)

Fortunately, my mom’s neighbour operates a bustling market selling homegrown vegetables, canned goods, and baking. She had bags of green tomatoes – beefsteaks, she thought. Now I have tomatoes ripening in my kitchen, bananas strategically placed on each tray to facilitate the process. In a week or two, I expect to make roasted tomato sauce for my freezer; I save the smaller tomatoes for use in our daily salads.

This sauce is money in the bank for a busy cook – it is ready RIGHT NOW, needing only thawing, as the best-ever pizza sauce, pasta sauce, soup base, and all-purpose ingredient in any dish requiring tomato sauce, from Bolognese to butter chicken.

Last fall, and again this summer, that tomato sauce featured prominently in al fresco pizza suppers enjoyed in the shade of the maple tree. Having the sauce in my freezer meant that my prep time was reduced, allowing me to enjoy a glass of wine with our friends. After more than a year of isolation, those pizzas symbolize the beauty and collegiality of the table, antidote in small part to the violence of how tomatoes came to European cooks. So first we eat. Then we pour another glass of wine and debate ways to grow the best tomatoes.

Roasted Tomato Sauce

This “oven-queen’s special” minimizes splatter and mess while producing a sauce bursting with fresh tomato flavour. One “quarter sheet” baking pan (about 13” x 18”) makes 6-8 cups of sauce. For Tomato and Lovage Soup, sauté minced lovage and add to the sauce, thinning with stock as needed. Vary endlessly.

3 lb. ripe tomatoes, halved or quartered depending on size

1-2 onions, minced

1 head garlic, peeled

olive oil to drizzle

salt and pepper to taste

Set the oven at 375 – 400 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Arrange the tomatoes in a single layer on the pan. Sprinkle the onion and garlic on top. Drizzle with olive oil to taste, then sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Roast for about 45 minutes, or until the tomatoes are collapsed, charred nicely along the edges, and cooked thoroughly. Transfer in several batches to a food processor and blitz briefly, leaving the sauce a bit chunky. Freeze in whatever volume seems useful to you: in my 2-person house, I use 2-cup containers.

Hot Summer Cooking

Grainews

September 2021.

Like many rural residents, Dave and I live surrounded by trees and shrubs: the double windbreak planted by my grandfather in the 1940s – caraganas, Manitoba maple, and linden – with ornamental crabapples, lilacs, blue spruce, white paper birch, fruit trees, highbush cranberry, columnar aspens added since. I love our trees. In the tough climate we live in, they offer protection from wind and sun for us and the birds. In an old house devoid of air conditioning, I am extra grateful. In fact, our favourite dining room is outdoors, sheltered from the wind and shaded by a maple.

My cooking style shifts in hot weather, as does when I cook: morning, before the heat, making a “cold supper”, as Dave calls it. His taste runs to deli classics, like egg salad, tuna salad, potato salad. Mine runs to white or black bean salad, chickpea salad, lentil salad, all of which improve as they stand in the fridge for several days.

Beans take time to cook, so I cook extra: it’s faster to thaw the extras than to cook a new batch. Use home-cooked beans, not canned, for the best texture, flavour, and control of salt content. Do not pre-soak your beans or lentils, as the practice strips out the nutrients. Just cover them in plenty of water, add a snug lid, and simmer without adding any salt, which toughens them and lengthens their cooking time. How long to cook a bean depends on the age of the bean: the older the bean, the longer the cooking time and the more water needed. This makes a convincing case for not hoarding! Best to buy the new crop – we do live in a country that produces massive amounts of beans and lentils (mostly for export and as livestock feed), after all. When you find a local grower, or if you grow them yourself, buy the new crop and compost whatever you have left in your cupboard jars. As a rotational crop, pulses kick nitrogen back into the soil; as a dietary staple, lentils and beans and chickpeas are high-protein and high-fibre, low-fat, and low on the glycemic index, thus ideal for managing blood sugars.

During cooking, don’t let your beans boil dry – nothing rescues a burnt bean. It’s important to remember that there’s no such thing as an al dente bean. If it’s at all crunchy, not only will it give you gas, but its vital nutrients will not be available to your body for uptake. So cook beans until they are tender, as long as it takes. Some types of lentils are tender within an hour, and my favourite beans, great northern white, are usually tender within a couple hours, while chickpeas can take considerably longer. (If you have a pressure cooker, use it now.)

When you make a bean or lentil salad, think of the four pillars of seasoning: salt, acid, sweet, heat. Add generous amounts of olive or another flavourful oil, salt, and vinegar or citrus juice to the dressing. I also add grated carrots, roasted vegetables, minced onions or chives, minced fresh herbs, mustard, something sweet and flavourful (liquid honey, maple syrup, pomegranate molasses), and often, some spices I like – roasted and ground cumin and coriander, smoked or sweet paprika. Of course you can add cooked, flavourful meats – smoked ham or ham hocks, for example – but remember that beans are a protein, so any meat should serve primarily as a flavour agent.

Vary the seasoning to suit your mood and the type of bean. Make enough vinaigrette that the beans and their accompaniments are taking a bath, then remember to stir the whole mess several times while it stands in the fridge making friends of its ingredients. It keeps, so make enough for a few days’ suppers. Add fragile garnishes when you serve. So first we eat under a shady tree, then we can compare notes on our best beans.

Black Bean Salad with Totopos and Watermelon

Totopos are crispy bits of corn tortilla, fried in oil until crispy, an ideal garnish for a black bean salad. Make extra – they tend to get gobbled up. Serves 6-10

2 -3 cups cooked black beans (refer to cooking tips above)

1 cup grated carrot

½ cup minced chives or green onions

½ cup minced fresh basil

½ cup minced fresh cilantro, a bit saved for garnish

½ tsp. smoked paprika

1 Tbsp. sweet paprika

2 Tbsp. Lea & Perrins

½ cup olive oil

½ cup red or white wine vinegar

2 Tbsp. mustard

2 Tbsp. maple syrup or pomegranate molasses

salt and pepper to taste

Garnishes:

2 cups diced watermelon

1 cup crumbled feta cheese

2 cups totopos (1 6” corn tortilla per person, diced and sautéed in olive oil until crisp)

Combine all ingredients except the garnishes. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Mix gently, refrigerate for several hours, stirring several times, and garnish at time of service.