Tuesday 13 September 2011

David and Goliath

This year I have grown tomatoes of seven different varieties, some large, some small. If you had never seen a tomato before, would you believe that these three are basically the same type of fruit? The big one is Beefsteak, the little red one is "Maskotka" and the yellow one is "Tumbling Junior Yellow".


The green one is the biggest tomato fruit I have had so far. It weighed in at 486 grams (1.14 lbs).


This is one from a batch of four such fruit, all picked from the same plant on the same day.


They were grown from a pack labelled "Rainbow Beefsteak" potentially giving plants with fruits of one of six different colours. I only grew two, and the both turned out to be green ones, and a friend to whom I gave another plant tells me that hers was also green.


The three fruits at the back of the photo above are also Green Beefsteak, but from a different plant. You can see that they are smoother, and less enormous. Despite being green, they are (were) definitely ripe. Since this photo was taken, Jane has made them into a delicious sauce for eating with pasta. Actually, if you have any green tomatoes (not unripe ones, I emphasise), you might want to try making it yourself.
 
You make the tomato sauce in the same way as normal, by simmering the diced fruits with a chopped onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, a pinch of Herbes de Provence, and a little water.

I think this tomato ought to be re-named "Lemon and Lime"!
You then pass the cooked veg through a mouli-legumes or a sieve in order to remove the pips and skins. But the star element of this sauce is that you now add some Basil pesto (Jane used a couple of cubes of our frozen home-made pesto). This gives it a wonderful flavour and aroma, and makes the colour a darker green.

A delicious but unusual sauce! When you see it, you expect it to taste of spinach, or peas, or broccoli - and then you try it and it tastes of tomato. A very odd experience. Perhaps I'm too conditioned into expecting tomatoes to be red, which is silly when I grow lots of different types myself.

16 comments:

  1. Our biggest ever was 1.1kg in 2009. I posted about it here if you are interested. Our variety was Brandywine

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  2. Crickey! That's enormous but very good looking. I have never tasted a green tomato. I understand the conditioning concept of a tomato needing to be red to be a tomato. We have a similar concept with our golden raspberries. Similar confusion but lovely tasty surprise.

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  3. Miam !!! You open my appetite.

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  4. There is something in the South here in U.S called "fried green tomatoes" (Could that be a movie title!). They are really just sliced green tomatoes before they ripen, dipped in corn meal and fried until tender. Delicious. Wonder how your green ones would do?

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  5. Those green ones look quite spectacular, and yes, I can see that it would cause confusion. The eyes tell us one thing and our tastebuds another.

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  6. One year I grew the tiny currant tomatoes. Never again! They took forever to pick. I think I will stick with the big ones like you have there in green. It is amazing how many varieties of tomatoes there are to choose from. I do like that little yellow one though so it may go on my list for next year.

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  7. That sauce sounds delicious. I'm a novice gardener as you know and I've only ever grown the cherry tomatoes. I really need to expand. I've never even tasted a ripe green tomato.

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  8. Wow Mark, they look amazing! How do you know when they are ripe? Do you need to stalk your plants, sniffing them suspiciously?

    L

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  9. interesting...green tomato based pasta sauce seems like a great new idea...normally use green variety in indian styled curry....but i think those are unripe ones...never tried this Beefsteak variety ...:)

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  10. A great post! I haven't ever had ripe green tomatoes. At least I get to see them on your blog.

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  11. Those big tomatoes are impressive. Never eaten green tomatoes myself, looks good.

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  12. I'm always thrown by the green too. I friend makes tomato sauce (as in ketchup) from green tomatoes which is lovely but it does look slightly odd on a sausage.

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  13. Sounds delicious!

    Looks like a great variety to try.

    We only tried 3 variteites this year, mainly in keeping with most of the traditional ones.

    Martin

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  14. It's amazing how many different varieties of tomato there are, and also just how much each variety varies from the next.

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  15. I'm not sure what I would make of a green tomato sauce - I am having the same internal debate about making roast tomato sauce with some of our yellow tomatoes, it just seems wrong, somehow, although just eating them whole, fresh or roasted, is delicious...

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