Tomato Season!

Every year around May I start highly anticipating my favorite product of the summer...Tomatoes. One of natures most perfect foods I believe. Last year Tom and I grew 3 varieties: Cherokee Purple-his favorite, Cosmonaut Volkov-my favorite, and Heinz Paste. I think we just about hit the nail on the head as far as what I need out of a tomato.

Cherokee Purple is an ugly, juicy, but very flavorful tomato. Great for salads, and making tomato juice. You have to pick it when the bottom is deep pink and the top is still green and then wait a couple of days for it to ripen. It does look purple.

Cosmonaut Volkov is a beautiful tomato that slices nicely and has an excellent flavor. Great for sandwiches or salsa, and putting up as diced tomatoes.

While you can make sauce from any tomato, a paste tomato greatly reduces the amount of cook time. For starters, most of them won't have blemishes so the blanch and peel is really all you'll need to do before putting them through a food mill. I like to puree them in a food processor first then put them through the mill to extract seeds. Here again, the paste tomato won't have nearly the amount of seeds as a salad or slicing tomato. The difference in reduction time of Cherokee Purple (juicy) and Heinz paste was 7 hours. And even then the Cherokee Purple was no where near as thick.

Even as diced tomatoes the Cherokee Purple yields more than 50 percent juice to tomato chunks. Not a problem for me because I love the juice for drinking, making a Bloody Mary, or in soup.

This year we've added 3 more varieties, though I'm beginning to wonder if we need bother.

Principe Borghese is another paste variety, very small but I imagine it has a big flavor with minimal liquid. I've been told to not bother with blanching and peeling but just go for the food processor/mill.

Oregon Spring was terrible early on, but may have become another good sandwich tomato. It holds up very well to slicing though does not have as good a flavor as the Cosmonaut Volkov. But some fruits are huge.

Finally no garden is complete without the Cherry Tomato. Say what you want about grape tomatoes but they aren't as flavorful and can be quite mealy. Gardner's Delight is bright and juicy. And if you have more than you need, cherry tomatoes are excellent halved and cooked with Okra. Okra is typically something we also have more of than we need. See recipes for Stewed Okra and Tomatoes, and Pickled Okra.

But my favorite ways to eat a Cherry Tomato 1.) halved on top of a cucumber slice with my green onion cream cheese schmeer, 2.) with a basil leaf wrapped around it warm from the sun. See also Caprese Kabobs recipe.