Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Tomato
I say tomato, you say tomato let's call the whole thing a song that only works if it's sung and not read.
Tomato time is upon us!! Everyone is writing about tomatoes. I’ve tweeted about them 5 times in the last month alone. I ate 7 of them on Sunday. Three for lunch, four for dinner, all purchased at the Logan Square Farmer’s Market. Only $7 for those tomatoes. It was supposed to be $7.48 but the guy took off the 48 cents because I had cash, nice. I threw some salt, pepper and a nice feta seasoned with thyme, rosemary, and capers, $6 for a pound at that same Farmer’s Market, on them and went to town. It was good as hell. These are the ones I got. Dang.
If you read anyone of those articles linked above, you’ve already read the best words to describe peak tomato season tomatoes. Don’t expect the mealy, mushy, flavorless, and I hate to say it but it’s true horseshit tomatoes you eat outside of August. Even those giant Big AG, modified to hell tomatoes taste good this month. And don’t get me started on the heirlooms. Big chunky glorious boys that come in all colors, and range the gamut from peppery to sweet to earthy, sometimes all in the same tomato. You can eat ‘em raw, in a salad, on a burger, in bruschetta, make ‘em into a sauce. They’ll do it all. Just don’t put them in the damn fridge otherwise I will come to your house like it’s the damn Purge.
Which brings me to my newest segment: TOMATO TIPS!
TIP NUMBER ONE: DON’T REFRIGERATE YOUR TOMATOES.
Science, as fake as it is, clearly backs me on this one. Refrigerating tomatoes causes them to release some sort of chemical compound that makes them mushy. Getting shipped to stores in refrigerated trucks is why grocery store tomatoes taste mushy and bland for most of the year. Instead of the fridge, leave them on a shelf somewhere that doesn’t get too hot. Trust me. Your nice good tomatoes will not turn into mushy bad ones. Like if Haley Joel Osmont had never gotten famous.
TIP NUMBER TWO: SALT YOUR DAMN TOMATOES
Try your tomatoes without salt. They’re pretty good right? Now put some salt on them. Use any type of salt: Maldon salt, kosher salt, that pink Himalayan salt that is just a scam to steal money from Millennials, maybe not rock salt though. They taste 1000% better, right? Right. While you shouldn’t do an impersonation of Samin from SALT, FAT, ACID, HEAT salting pasta water while salting your tomatoes, you should use more than a little. The salt lets the tomatoes really speak their truth you know. Their flavor truth. Their flruth.
TIP NUMBER THREE: EAT THEM SOONER RATHER THAN LATER
You may be scared of wasting all your tomatoes in one go. You’ll want to parcel them out like gold nuggets, letting only your most trusted lieutenants taste of the sweet flesh of the tomato, doling them out as a reward for doing your will. RESIST THIS TEMPTATION. Tomatoes can go bad pretty quickly and there is no greater sin, mortal or venial, than letting your tomatoes go to waste. While the medieval church may have punished you for eating tomatoes – people ate off pewter plates back then and the acid in tomatoes leached lead from the plate, making them literally poisonous – the medieval church also thought that being hot automatically made you holier than ugly people. So, don’t listen to them, no matter how much you hate that the reforms of The Council of Trent took the Church off the true path. When you buy your tomatoes they’re probably going to be pretty ripe, so I’d say eat them in the next three days. Four or five days if you’re a gambler. And at 6 days? Who knows? Don’t want to be playing games with your tomatoes.
TIP NUMBER FOUR: SMELL YOUR TOMATOES
Folklore tells us that the best way to pick a ripe melon, water or musk, is to knock on it and listen for a hollow sound. Similar folk wisdom exists for tomatoes but of a non-aural nature. Giving a tomato a big ole sniff is the best way to tell if it’s ripe or not. Not to be too druidic but they should smell “red.” They should smell like summer, full and juicy. It shouldn’t be overly sweet, but maybe a hint of dirt should exist. Similar to that old canard about pornography, you’ll know it when you smell it. If it smells like nothing or like wet cardboard? Don’t get it! Also give it a little squeeze. It should give a little but not too much.
TIP NUMBER FIVE: HAVE FUN WITH YOUR TOMATOES
If you only ever eat tomatoes with burgers, maybe slice ‘em up and eat ‘em raw with a little salt, olive oil and balsamic. If you’re a caprese head, maybe try a tomato gazpacho. If you only ever eat tomatoes by biting into them like an apple, maybe try not doing that you freak. Try making a full English breakfast and quick frying your tomatoes in the grease from the banger. It’s hella good! Roast them with some garlic and make a salsa! Try sun-drying your own tomatoes. Sing to them in Italian to make them feel at home. History Fact: tomatoes were not a big part of Italian cuisine until like the 1880s and didn’t really come into their own until post-WWII. See above medieval church factoid. Cook them with some anchovies. Just like bask in their glory. Throw on Handel’s Hallelujah chorus or the dope part of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony where the choir comes in and just swing your basket of tomatoes around in a circle while a camera pans above you. Have some freaking fun.
TIP NUMBER SIX: DO NOT THROW YOUR TOMATOES
Well don’t throw these specific tomatoes. Throwing shitty refrigerated December-ass tomatoes at fascists, Republicans, Donald Trump, Proud Boys, and/or Drew Carey is fine, perhaps even to be celebrated. But do not waste your delicious, meaty, thicc heirlooms on these horrid creatures. They do not deserve the flavor. It is precious to me.
Hopefully you live near a supermarket or a farmer’s market. If you’re in Chicago the Logan Square one has a far better tomato selection than the Wicker Park one. Please, just don’t be an idiot about this. Eat a friggin tomato.
Also here is a funny video