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From poison to passion

The mighty tomato and its secret past

They hang heavy on the vine like magical red lanterns, just in time to celebrate this week’s Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival.

Their fat little faces, nestled amongst yellowing leaves, peer out from under plastic sheeting draped by doting gardeners determined to protect them from the crisp night air and ripen as many as possible before winter sets in. And when it does, their hearty tang and lush redness gladdens many a heart and reminds us of golden summer days just past.

From simple salads and to sophisticated sauces, what would we do without the mighty tomato?

Name a 19-year-old who hasn’t cranked open a tin of tomato sauce during their first tentative forays into a kitchen. And who doesn’t turn to tomatoes tinned, fresh or otherwise to dress up eggplant, seafood or plain old macaroni on a moment’s notice?

But the tomato hasn’t always been a cook’s best friend. For much of its long history it has been accused, quite unfairly, of one transgression or another.

Wild tomatoes, the forbearers of our contemporary cultivated ones, originated in the northern Andes in area which included parts of present-day Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia and Chile. The plants sprawled through tall grasses. While the small, bright red fruits – much like cherry tomatoes – may have been casually plucked, Incas and other early Andean people did not bother to cultivate the plant.

It took centuries, but the tomato managed to spread northward into what is now Central America and Mexico, its tough seed dispersed by birds into regions inhabited by pre-Mayan Indians. It was these people who domesticated the fruit that Cortes and his fellow explorers eventually took back to Europe.

The Aztecs, who called the fruit tomatl , prized a yellow variety, which the Spaniards dispatched home. Hence, the first common European name, "golden fruit", from the Italian pomodoro.

But the passion southern Europeans first bestowed on tomatoes – one shared with another New World import, the eggplant – was quickly dampened. Botanists identified the tomato as a member of the family, Solanaceae , whose members include belladonna and deadly nightshade.

So the tomato was toyed with (recipes are included in early herbal books for its preparation), but with a good deal of caution, much like one enters certain love affairs. Pietro Antonio Michiel wrote in the 16th century: "If I should eat of this fruit, cut in slices in a pan with butter and oil, it would be injurious and harmful to me." Yikes.

Indeed, the leaves and stems of the tomato plant are mildly poisonous, but the toxic alkaloids responsible are perfectly inert and harmless in the fruit. Still, early herbal books called the fruit everything from atrocious to tasteless, one early French source saying it provoked "loathing and vomiting", another attributing colic and diarrhoea to ripe tomatoes.

While it suffered endlessly in the kitchen, the tomato’s popularity grew as an ornamental plant. Gardeners prized it as a fast-growing cover for arbors and outhouses. In fact, the English cultivated tomatoes for some 200 years before daring to eat them.

While French settlers in Quebec and New Orleans used the tomato for catsup by the late 1700s, it was rarely seen in the North American marketplace. It took one New Jersey eccentric/entrepreneur – he was crazy enough to try and convince farmers to plant fields of tomatoes – to change all that.

Robert Gibbon Johnson was so convinced that tomatoes were not only edible but delicious that he boldly announced he would eat not one, but several tomatoes – and do so in full view of anyone who cared to watch.

So one day in 1820, or 1830, depending on who’s telling the story, Mr. Johnson appeared on the courthouse steps in Salem, New Jersey and consumed – gasp – an entire basket filled of tomatoes from his garden. While some at the event nearly fainted at the sight, grateful cooks today have Mr. Johnson to thank for crossing the line and unleashing the mighty tomato from its terrible past.

SIDEBAR:

When the moon is full, mankind is one

In China, the full moon has always represented a time for friends and family. The Mid-Autumn Festival or Moon Festival, celebrating the harvest moon, when the moon is at its brightest (this year, Sept. 28), is a huge festival in China, second only to the Spring Festival. Tied to the harvest and China’s agrarian roots, Mid-Autumn Festival is a time for love, warmth and family reunions. So people in China were pretty pissed off this year when the government canned the day off that traditionally marks the festival and they couldn’t get home to loved ones.

Traditionally, people celebrate the event by getting together at scenic spots for "moon appreciation" parties in the cool night air. Mooncakes and pomeloes – those fruits you see in Costco or Chinatown that look like giant green grapefruits – are big, as are lanterns, the more the merrier. All very romantic, especially with the legendary romance between Lady Chang O, the goddess of the moon, and her husband swirling around the occasion like a red silk veil. As one of my Chinese-Canadian friends puts it, it’s like Valentine’s Day for Chinese people.

 

RECIPES

Green tomato pie in your eye

They’re sometimes called love apples – pommes d’amour – but when you’ve got bushels of tomatoes too green to ripen, there ain’t much love in sight. You can only eat so much green tomato relish, and fried green tomatoes have never been a big item north of the 49 th parallel, despite the cutesy movie, so here’s a fix. This green tomato and apple pie from the Gourmet Cookbook is a revelation, maybe even a revolution. Now you can branch out and fall in love with green tomatoes, too.

Line a 9-inch pie plate with basic pastry. Brush bottom and sides with unbeaten egg white. Cover with a layer of thinly-sliced small green tomatoes. Sprinkle with a little salt mixed with a little cinnamon and nutmeg and dot with 1 tbsp. each of butter and brown sugar that’s been creamed together. Cover with a layer of thinly sliced tart apples and repeat the seasoning and the sugar. Add another layer of tomatoes and two layers of apples, all seasoned and sugared. Pour over a 1/3 cup of cider. Top with a crust, slash it and brush with milk. Bake in a moderate oven (350 degrees) for 40 minutes or until the crust is lightly brown. Serve warm or cold with heavy cream.

You say tomato, I say tomatillo

Although they’re sometimes called tomate verde in Mexico, there’s nothing really tomato-ish about tomatillos (pronounced toe-ma-tee-yo; double ‘l’ in Spanish always sounds as a ‘y’). Tomatillos are their own little unique green fruit – not even a third cousin to tomatoes – about the size of a big walnut. They come wrapped in this cool paper husk you always remove.

Gardeners are starting to grow tomatillos here in Canada, and if you can get your hands on some fresh local ones, what a treat – sassy, lemony and juicy. Great in chile, a stew, whatever. This tomatillo salsa is even better, and you can eat it from morning to night – it’s excellent on eggs.

Remove the husks from a 1/2 pound of tomatillos and rinse them well. Cover with water and bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes or until they’re soft and transparent. Place the tomatillos, a little of the cooking water, 8 serrano chiles (or jalapeños or habaneros to taste), 1 small chopped onion and 4 or 5 cloves of chopped garlic in a blender or processor. Purée until smooth. Heat about a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a pot and sauté the sauce.

For a toasted taste, heat the tomatillos in a heavy frying pan, turning them frequently until the husks are quite brown and the fruit is soft. Peel off the husks before using.