If you are on the receiving end of seed catalogs or have been to your local farmer’s market lately, you’ve probably seen or heard of the Indigo series of tomatoes.
These Indigos are a relatively new addition to the tomato family, and are becoming quite popular. For good reason too: they look pretty cool with their deep purple shoulders, and that dark purple comes from anthocyanin, a powerful antioxidant found in many dark fruits. And the best part is they were developed using traditional breeding techniques (no test-tube tomatoes for me, thank you), utilizing wild species that contained the anthocyanin genes.
The first generations received mixed reviews: looked nice, but the flavor could be lacking, to put it mildly. Although in all fairness, the tasteless fruits may have just been picked too early. A recent addition to the mix is the Blue Berries tomato, which I decided to try this year after reading more favorable comments.
Burst cherry tomatoes, doesn’t that just sound like summer goodness? Just say that with your eyes closed, and I’ll bet you can almost taste them popping on your tongue…
This recipe comes via S (via the Smitten Kitchen, who has some pretty yummy stuff out there). Not only does it take advantage of our fresh cherry tomatoes, but we also throw in some zucchini and corn for good measure. Summer in a pie… or a tart.
Pastry:
1 1/4 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
8 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, or good quality lard, cut into small cubes
1/4 cup ice water
Filling:
Splash of olive oil
3 cups cherry or grape tomatoes
1-2 ears corn, cut from the cob (1-2 cups)
1 small zucchini or summer squash, diced (about 1 cup)
Handful of fresh herbs (basil, thyme, oregano, chives… whatever you’ve got)
Salt and pepper
To make the dough, combine the flour and salt in a large bowl. Add the butter or lard to the dough and cut in, using a pastry blender or your fingertips, until the mixture looks sandy. Add the water and stir gently until large lumps form. Form the lumps into a ball, wrap with plastic, and refrigerate for 1 hour.
For the filling, add a swirl of olive oil, tomatoes, salt and pepper to a saute pan then cover and heat on medium-high. Flip the tomatoes every minute or so. They’ll start to burst pretty quickly – when most of them have, turn the heat down to medium, and add the zucchini and corn. Saute for a couple minutes, until softened up a bit. Remove from heat, and stir in any herbs. Transfer mixture to a large plate and spread it out, so that it will cool faster – you can’t put the piping hot mix into the dough!
Heat oven to 400 F. On a floured counter, roll the dough out into a 12-inch round. The nice thing about this recipe is that it doesn’t need to look perfect; I hate rolling out pie dough, and this is very forgiving since it all just kinda gets bunched up in the end. Transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet – it’s easier for me to partially roll the dough onto the rolling pin in order to move it. Spoon the tomato mixture into the center of the dough, leaving a couple inches clear around the edges. It’s best here to use a slotted spoon, so you don’t take as much juice with you – you don’t want a wet dough. Fold the border over the filling, pleating the edge to make it fit, and leaving the center open.
Bake for about 30-35 minutes, until the top crust is golden brown. Let it cool for a few minutes, slice it up, and top with some shaved parmesan to serve.
One of the new tomato varieties we tried this year was the White Tomesol. I picked it up from Baker Creek, who describe it this way: “An amazing heirloom that is bursting with fragrance and natural goodness that’s hard to beat. One of the best tomatoes I have tasted, being both sweet and rich. The cream colored fruit are beautiful, smooth and weigh about 8 ounces each. The vines set heavy yields of this rare treasure.”
The first one ripened up the other day – it’s a light creamy color with darker yellow shoulders. Nice looking, and would look pretty on a plate with some darker red or purple slices. It’s your typical tomato size, roughly a baseball, more oblong than round (though if anyone really cares about perfect roundness, you should stick to the grocery store).
Taste is a solid tomato flavor – not overly sweet (especially right after you’ve eaten some Sungold), more acid than sugar, but not too much on the tart side either. Good, but if I were growing solely for flavor and not factoring in appearance, it probably wouldn’t make the top ten list. But of course, I grow as many colors as possible – who wants all red and boring? It certainly tastes good enough that it should stay on the list of keepers, at least until I run out of room for trying even more new varieties.
Black Cherry tomato was a new addition to the fold this year, and I’ve been quite happy with them. They’re not as sweet as, say, the Sungold (though not much is), and are a little tangier than sweet, which is nice in a cherry tomato. They’re the biggest of the cherries that I grow, with most just a little smaller than a golf ball. They’re prone to cracking, although with as nuts as the rain/no rain pattern has been this year, I’m prone to cracking too. Nicely productive in clusters of 6-8, and the vines just keep growing, and are now causing their stakes to topple over. Definitely on the keeper list.
Continuing my appraisal of the different tomatoes I grew this year, this post is devoted to the big (in most cases) guys. The first part can be found here. As I’m sure you’re tired of hearing, this year was not a great one for tomatoes, and the garden in general, so it may be hard to make a fair assessment, especially when it comes to production. But we’ll try.
Giant Syrian – this was the biggest I grew. Tasted good, nice size, not too seedy, most of them were not really the nice round tomato shape (though heirlooms are often not). Definitely more pink than red. Not a lot of production, I maybe got a half dozen off of two plants (unfortunately, the same can be said for most of what I grew).
Japanese Black Trifele – decent size (3-4 oz), decent production, good flavor – a little more depth than a regular red. Characteristic dark red/brown/green of black tomatoes. First of the non-minis to ripen.
Moonglow – baseball-sized, bright orangey-yellow. This one ripened just after the JBTs, but I also had a couple cases of blossom end rot. Taste was adequate, sweeter and less acidic than most reds. The first one I cut had a very dry cavity with almost no seeds, but subsequent fruits had the normal seeds and jelly.
Redfield Beauty – regular old red tomato, baseball-sized, good flavor, pretty uniform. Production was lacking a bit, but no more so than the rest.
Costoluto Genovese – I love the shaped of this one, flatter with lots of lobes and ridges. Taste and color (bright red) are also good. Probably the lowest production; I think I got three or four total from two plants. However, I’m using this as my barometer, since it’s the only one I’ve grown in the past, and has always produced very well for me. Based on its shoddy output this year, I’m assuming the rest of them would also produce better too, in ideal circumstances.
Principe Borghese – the drying tomato. Fresh flavor isn’t spectacular, but the dried ones concentrate it. Since the output was lower, I only dried one batch, as the rest of the time, I didn’t have enough ripe at one time. The rest were just added to sauces. Pingpong ball size. Clusters of 8-10.
Opalka – first paste tomato. Good size fruits, 5-7″ long, dry cavity with few seeds. Good production too, even in a non-productive year. Didn’t eat much of them fresh, but the sauce turned out well. Most prone to splitting of all the larger varieties.
San Marzano – the other paste tomato. Fruits are maybe half the size of the Opalka, 2-3″ long, but very consistent and uniform. Pretty good production off of these plants too. Don’t taste like much fresh. Few seeds.
And there’s the final recap. Not the best of years for tomatoes. I’m looking to increase the number of plants next year, and I’ll probably have a bumper crop and be totally overwhelmed. After this year though, I’ll welcome it.
