Tomanytoes

Tomatoes, so many tomatoes, help? - Constantly Gardening

Despite the fact there are tomatoes today, ready, needing to be picked and processed - relax, they do not have to be eaten in the next 24 hours. Tomatoes can be sliced, salted and laid on cooking racks, the kind used to cool down cookies and placed in the sunshine. Maybe sun-dried tomatoes aren’t the foodie thing they once were but it is a quick and easy way of preserving a harvest. Especially if you are like me, who despite all my cooking skills worry that any home canning project will result in a ptomaine outbreak.

In the fairly recent past, before wash, seed, peel and freeze was a preserving option, folks had a multitude of ways of keeping tomatoes: Chutneys, relishes, pickled tomatoes, tomato wine (sugar and tomatoes until they ferment; a self-preservation of sorts). Our recent forebears made ketchup, tons of homemade ketchup. Andrew Smith reprints a recipe in The Tomato in America, that calls for about 20 hours of simmering after first cleaning, coring, salting, rinsing and seeding and after all that work it is still only ketchup.

Being a modern fella, I’d bypass the ketchup and pack either salsa or Pico de gallo into ziplock bags, load them into the freezer so that some quesadilla in the future might be flavored with the taste of summer.

If you aren’t in a preserving state of mind, there are multiple tomato and bread combinations – the rocket and tomato based pan bagna or with possibly sub in a slice of fresh mozzarella with either a little pesto or fresh basil. The BLT, with extra T. Or if you are vegan inclined – tomato, bread and avocado makes for a fine sandwich. Bread salad, panzanella, with cherry tomatoes is a fine treat. Or bake tomatoes into a loaf of bread so tomorrows sandwich can have that built-in flavor without actual tomato slices.

Tomato tart – piecrust topped with sliced tomatoes and olives at the end of baking. If you avoid the flour, there is tomato potato gratin, just keep in mind the tomatoes will be done faster so par-cook the potatoes (microwave is fine) before baking them together. Ratatouille. Gazpacho. To cook outside the western pantheon of foods; tomato slices cooked with turmeric, ginger, curry and cauliflower, all served over rice.

If you don’t think you can eat all those tomatoes, maybe you can drink them - juice away and have your friends over for a fresh Bloody Mary this week. Or if you don’t share the opinion that it just isn’t a Sunday morning without vodka, turn the juice into a light tomato soup, add herbs and vegetable stock. Freeze the juice to add to ricey things in the future, pilaf, risotto or jambalaya.

You can give them away: At work, a basket of homegrown veg, imperfect, asymmetric and flecked with dirt impresses the modern apartment dweller in a way that perfectly displayed, $6.99 a pound heirloom varieties never ever could.