Tomatoes Quotes

“You're always such a disappointment, Augustus. Couldn't you have at least gotten orange tomatoes?”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“While we’re at it, why don’t we add a third emotion to this list: lust. You are probably unaware that Linnaeus lumped the tomato into the same genus as the potato, a food with a reputation for its widespread availability and easy satisfaction of oral needs.”
― Benson Bruno, A Story that Talks About Talking is Like Chatter to Chattering Teeth, and Every Set of Dentures can Attest to the Fact that No...

“In the restaurant kitchen, August meant lobsters, blackberries, silver queen corn, and tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes. In honor of the last year of the restaurant, Fiona was creating a different tomato special for each day of the month. The first of August (two hundred and fifty covers on the book, eleven reservation wait list) was a roasted yellow tomato soup. The second of August (two hundred and fifty covers, seven reservation wait list) was tomato pie with a Gruyère crust. On the third of August, Ernie Otemeyer came in with his wife to celebrate his birthday and since Ernie liked food that went with his Bud Light, Fiona made a Sicilian pizza- a thick, doughy crust, a layer of fresh buffalo mozzarella, topped with a voluptuous tomato-basil sauce. One morning when she was working the phone, Adrienne stepped into the kitchen hoping to get a few minutes with Mario, and she found Fiona taking a bite out of red ripe tomato like it was an apple. Fiona held the tomato out.
"I'd put this on the menu," she said. "But few would understand.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Blue Bistro

“Ahead, a house sits close to the road: a small, single-story place painted mint green. Ivy grows up one corner and onto the roof, the green tendrils swaying like a girl's hair let loose from a braid. In front there's a full and busy vegetable garden, with plants jostling for real estate and bees making a steady, low, collective hum. It reminds me of the aunties' gardens, and my nonna's when I was a kid. Tomato plants twist gently skywards, their lazy stems tied to stakes. Leafy heads of herbs- dark parsley, fine-fuzzed purple sage, bright basil that the caterpillars love to punch holes in. Rows and rows of asparagus. Whoever lives here must work in the garden a lot. It's wild but abundant, and I know it takes a special vigilance to maintain a garden of this size.
The light wind lifts the hair from my neck and brings the smell of tomato stalks. The scent, green and full of promise, brings to mind a childhood memory- playing in Aunty Rosa's yard as Papa speaks with a cousin, someone from Italy. I am imagining families of fairies living in the berry bushes: making their clothes from spiderweb silk, flitting with wings that glimmer pink and green like dragonflies'.”
― Hannah Tunnicliffe, Season of Salt and Honey

“Hm? These cherry tomatoes...
they've been dried. Right, Tadokoro? "
"Y-yes, sir! Back home, winter can be really long. In the summer we harvest a lot of vegetables and preserve them so we can have them in winter too. Mostly by sun drying them.
When I was little, I'd help with that part. That's when my Ma -um, I mean, my mother- taught me how to dry them in the oven.
You cut the cherry tomatoes in half, sprinkle them with rock salt and then slowly dry them at a low temperature, around 245* F.
I, um... thought they'd make a nice accent for the terrine... "
"Right. Tomatoes are rich in the amino acid glutamate essential in umami. Drying them concentrates the glutamate, greatly increasing the amount of sweetness the tongue senses.
In Shinomiya's case...
... his nine-vegetable terrine focused onfreshvegetables, with their bright and lively flavors.
But this recette accentuates the savory deliciousness of vegetables preserved over time. Both dishes are vegetable terrines...
... but one centers on the delicacy of the fresh...
... while the other on the savory goodness of the ripe and aged.
They are two completely different approaches to the same ingredient- vegetables!"
"Mmm! This is the flavor that warms the soul. You can feel my darling Megumi's kindness in every bite."
"For certain. If Shinomiya is the" Vegetable Magician "...
... I would say Megumi is...a modest spirit who gifts you with the bounty of nature.
a Vegetable Colobuckle! "*A tiny spirit from Ainu folklore said to live under butterbur leaves*
"No, that's not what she is! Megumi is a spirit who brings happiness and tastiness...
a Vegetable Warashi! "*Childlike spirits from Japanese folklore said to bring good fortune*
"Or perhaps she is that spirit which delivers the bounty of vegetables from the snowy north...
a Vegetable Yukinoko! "*Small snow sprites*
"It's not winter, so you can't call her a snow sprite!"
"How come all of you are picking spirits from Japanese folklore anyway?”
― Yuto Tsukuda, Thực kích のソーマ 4 [Shokugeki no Souma 4]

“The special was a tomato salad with bacon, basil, and blue cheese. It was a work of art. Fiona had found a rainbow of heirloom tomatoes- red, orange, yellow, green, purple, yellow with green stripes- and she stacked them on the plate in a tower as colorful as children's blocks.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Blue Bistro

“ Each bite is a tidal wave of savory, fatty eel juices...
... made fresh and tangy by the complementary flavors of olive oil and tomato!
...!
It'sperfect!
This dish has beautifully encapsulated the superbness of Capitone Eel! "
"Capitonespecifically means 'Large Female Eel'!
It's exactly this kind of eel that is served during Natale season from Christmas to New Year's.
Compared to normal eels, the Capitone is large, thick and juicy! In fact, it's considered a delicacy!"
"Yes, I've heard of them! The Capitone is supposed to be significantly meatier than the standardAnguilla."
*Anguilla is the Italian word for regular eels.*
"Okay. So the Capitone is special.
But is it special enough to make a dish so delicious the judges swoon? "
"No. The secret to the Capitone's refined deliciousness in this dish lies with the tomatoes.
You usedSan Marzanos,correct? "
"Ha Ragione!(Exactly!)
I specifically chose San Marzano tomatoes as the core of my dish! "
Of the hundreds of varieties of tomato, the San Marzano Plum Tomato is one of the least juicy.
Less juice means it makes a less watery and runny sauce when stewed!
"Thanks to the San Marzano tomatoes, this dish's sauce remained thick and rich with a marvelously full-bodied taste.
The blend of spices he used to season the sauce has done a splendid job of highlighting the eel's natural flavors as well. "
"You can't forget the wondrous polenta either. Crispy on the outside and creamy in the middle.
There's no greater garnish for this dish."
*Polenta is boiled cornmeal that is typically served as porridge or baked into cakes.*
"Ah. I see. Every ingredient of his dish is intimately connected to the eel.
Garlic to increase the fragrance, onion for condensed sweetness...
... and low-juice tomatoes. Those are the key ingredients.”
― Yuto Tsukuda, Thực kích のソーマ 25 [Shokugeki no Souma 25]

“How do you repair a broken tomato?
Tomato Paste.”
― Santosh Kalwar, Gags and Extracts

“As we walk through Savignio, the copper light of dusk settling over the town's narrow streets, we stop anyone we can find to ask for his or her ragù recipe. A retired policeman says he likes an all-pork sauce with a heavy hit of pancetta, the better for coating the pasta. A gelato maker explains that a touch of milk defuses the acidity of the tomato and ties the whole sauce together. Overhearing our kitchen talk below, an old woman in a navy cardigan pokes her head out of a second-story window to offer her take on the matter:" I only use tomatoes from my garden- fresh when they're in season, preserved when it gets cold. "
Inspired by the Savignio citizenry, we buy meat from the butcher, vegetables and wine from a small stand in the town's piazza, and head to Alessandro's house to simmer up his version of ragù: two parts chopped skirt steak, one part ground pancetta, the sautéed vegetable trio, a splash of dry white wine, and a few canned San Marzano tomatoes.”
― Matt Goulding, Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture

“Spaghetti alla puttanesca is typically made with tomatoes, olives, anchovies, capers, and garlic. It means, literally," spaghetti in the style of a prostitute. "It is a sloppy dish, the tomatoes and oil making the spaghetti lubricated and slippery. It is the sort of sauce that demands you slurp the noodlesGoodfellasstyle, staining your cheeks with flecks of orange and red. It is very salty and very tangy and altogether very strong; after a small plate, you feel like you've had a visceral and significant experience.
There are varying accounts as to when and how the dish originated- but the most likely explanation is that it became popular in the mid-twentieth century. The first documented mention of it is in Raffaele La Capria's 1961 novel,Ferito a Morte.According to the Italian Pasta Makers Union, spaghetti alla puttanesca was a very popular dish throughout the sixties, but its exact genesis is not quite known. Sandro Petti, a famous Napoli chef and co-owner of Ischian restaurant Rangio Fellone, claims to be its creator. Near closing time one evening, a group of customers sat at one of his tables and demanded to be served a meal. Running low on ingredients, Petti told them he didn't have enough to make anything, but they insisted. They were tired, and they were hungry, and they wanted pasta. "Facci una puttanata qualsiasi!"they cried." Make any kind of garbage! "The late-night eater is not usually the most discerning. Petti raided the kitchen, finding four tomatoes, two olives, and a jar of capers, the base of the now-famous spaghetti dish; he included it on his menu the next day under the name spaghetti alla puttanesca. Others have their own origin myths. But the most common theory is that it was a quick, satisfying dish that the working girls of Naples could knock up with just a few key ingredients found at the back of the fridge- after a long and unforgiving night.
As with all dishes containing tomatoes, there are lots of variations in technique. Some use a combination of tinned and fresh tomatoes, while others opt for a squirt of puree. Some require specifically cherry or plum tomatoes, while others go for a smooth, premade pasta. Many suggest that a teaspoon of sugar will "open up the flavor," though that has never really worked for me. I prefer fresh, chopped, and very ripe, cooked for a really long time. Tomatoes always take longer to cook than you think they will- I rarely go for anything less than an hour. This will make the sauce stronger, thicker, and less watery. Most recipes include onions, but I prefer to infuse the oil with onions, frying them until brown, then chucking them out. I like a little kick in most things, but especially in pasta, so I usually go for a generous dousing of chili flakes. I crush three or four cloves of garlic into the oil, then add any extras. The classic is olives, anchovies, and capers, though sometimes I add a handful of fresh spinach, which nicely soaks up any excess water- and the strange, metallic taste of cooked spinach adds an interesting extra dimension. The sauce is naturally quite salty, but I like to add a pinch of sea or Himalayan salt, too, which gives it a slightly more buttery taste, as opposed to the sharp, acrid salt of olives and anchovies. I once made this for a vegetarian friend, substituting braised tofu for anchovies. Usually a solid fish replacement, braised tofu is more like tuna than anchovy, so it was a mistake for puttanesca. It gave the dish an unpleasant solidity and heft. You want a fish that slips and melts into the pasta, not one that dominates it.
In terms of garnishing, I go for dried oregano or fresh basil (never fresh oregano or dried basil) and a modest sprinkle of cheese. Oh, and I always use spaghetti. Not fettuccine. Not penne. Not farfalle. Not rigatoni. Not even linguine. Always spaghetti.”
― Lara Williams, Supper Club

“Well then, first would be the abalone and sea urchin- the bounty of the sea!
Ah, I see! This foam on top iskombuseaweed broth that's been whipped into a mousse! "
"Mm!I can taste the delicate umami flavors seeping into my tongue! "
"The fish meat was aged for a day wrapped in kombu. The seaweed pulls just enough of the moisture out of the meat, allowing it to keep longer, a perfect technique for a bento that needs to last.Hm! Next looks to be bonito....! " What rich, powerful umami! "
Aha! This is the result of several umami components melding together. The glutamic acid in the kombu from the previous piece is mixing together in my mouth with the inosinic acid in the bonito!
"And, like, I cold aged this bonito across two days. Aging fish and meats boosts their umami components, y'know. In other words, the true effect of this bento comes together in your mouth... as you eat it in order from one end to the other."
"Next is a row... that looks to be made entirely from vegetables. But none of them use a single scrap of seaweed. The wrappers around each one are different vegetables sliced paper-thin!"
"Right! This bento totally doesn't go for any heavy foods."
"Next comes the sushi row that practically cries out that it's a main dish... raw cold-aged beef sushi!"Th-there it is again! The powerful punch of umami flavor as two components mix together in my mouth!
"Hm? Wait a minute. I understand the inosinic acid comes from the beef... but where is the glutamic acid?"
"From the tomatoes."
"Tomatoes? But I don't see any..."
"They're in there. See, I first put them in a centrifuge. That broke them down into their component parts- the coloring, the fiber, and thejus.I then filtered the jus to purify it even further. Then I put just a few drops on each piece of veggie sushi. "
"WHAT THE HECK?!"
"She took an ingredient and broke it down so far it wasn't even recognizable anymore? Can she even do that?"
Appliances like the centrifuge and cryogenic grinder are tools that were first developed to be used in medicine, not cooking. Even among pro chefs, only a handful are skilled enough to make regular use of such complex machines! Who would have thought a high school student was capable of mastering them to this degree!
"And last but not least we have this one. It's sea bream with some sort of pink jelly...
... resting on top of a Chinese spoon. "
That pink jelly was a pearl of condensed soup stock! Once it popped inside my mouth...
... it mixed together with the sea bream sushi until it tasted like-
"Sea breamchazuke!”
― Yuto Tsukuda, Thực kích のソーマ 8 [Shokugeki no Souma 8]

“I, like, added curry spices to the tomatoes and then firmed it with sodium alginate.
Then there's the mousse I made with powdered, freeze-dried foie gras blended with turmeric. The white dollop in the middle is a puree of potatoes and six different types of cheese.
Once your mouth has thoroughly cooled from those items, you should totally try the piecrust arches.
Oh! I flash froze it first, so it should have a very light, fluffy texture.
I kneaded coriander and a few other select spices into the pie dough. It'll cleanse your palate and give your tongue a break.
This dish is all about "Thermal Sense," y'know.
Molecular gastronomy teaches about the various contrasting temperature sensations foods and spices have.
I took those theories and put them together into a single dish.”
― Yuto Tsukuda, Thực kích のソーマ 7 [Shokugeki no Souma 7]

“There is even some evidence that eating a lot of tomatoes and tomato products can prevent sunburn. A recent presentation of research at the Royal Society of Medicine in London24 revealed that participants who added 5 tablespoons of tomato paste per day to their normal diet showed a 33 percent reduced risk of sunburn after twelve weeks!”
― Anthony Youn, The Age Fix: A Leading Plastic Surgeon Reveals How To Really Look Ten Years Younger

“To attempt to force a tomato plant to produce corn is going to result in bad tomatoes and no corn. And how many people are attempting to do the same thing with their lives, all the while wondering why they’re getting bad tomatoes and no corn?”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“After a couple of days, James spotted something strange about the food they were eating.
"It's an odd thing," he remarked to Jumbo, "but every single meal seems to contain at least one dish that's red, green and white. Yesterday it was that wonderful salad- tomatoes, basil and that white mozzarella stuff. Today it was some sort of herby green paste on white pasta, with tomatoes on the side."
Jumbo screwed up his face. "What's so odd about that?"
"They're the colors of the Italian flag."
"So they are." Jumbo thought some more. "Probably a coincidence, though. After all, they eat a lot of tomatoes, so the red's there from the start."
"Probably," James agreed.
But later that afternoon he made an excuse to drop by the kitchen, and peer over Livia's shoulder at what she was preparing for dinner. "What are these?" he asked casually.
"Pomodori ripieni con formaggio caprino ed erba cipollina,"she said tersely." Tomatoes stuffed with goat's cheese and chives. "
Ignoring the fact that his mouth was watering, he said, "They're the same colors as your flag."
Livia affected to notice this for the first time. "So they are. How strange."
"As one of the dishes at lunch. In fact, every meal you've cooked us has had something similar.”
― Anthony Capella, The Wedding Officer

“Gabriel Solomon, our sandy-lashed, red-haired, soon-to-be-surgeon waiter, recited the night's menu: salad, broiled salmon, boiled red potatoes, sliced tomatoes and corn on the cob, all served family style. A vast slab of butter lay on a white plate next to baskets of bread- white Wonder bread and buttermilk biscuits, neither of which had ever touched our lips. There was a bottle of Hershey's chocolate syrup in the center of the table, a novelty for Jews who didn't mix dairy foods with meat." The milk is from the farm's cows, "Gabe explained." It's pasteurized but it doesn't taste like city milk. If you'd like city milk, it will be delivered to you. But try the farm milk. Some guests love it. The children seem to enjoy it with syrup. "Gabe paused." I forgot to ask you, do you want your salad dressed or undressed? "Jack immediately replied," Undressed of course, "and winked.
My mother worried about having fish with rolls and butter. "Fish is dairy," my father pronounced, immediately an expert on Jewish dietary laws. "With meat it's no butter and no milk for the children."
Lil kept fidgeting in her straight-backed chair. "What kind of food is this?" she asked softly. "What do they call it?"
"American," the two men said in unison.
Within minutes Gabe brought us a bowl filled with iceberg lettuce, butter lettuce, red oak lettuce. "These are grown right here, in our own garden. We pick the greens daily. I brought you some oil and vinegar on the side, and a gravy boat of sour cream for the tomatoes. Take a look at these tomatoes." Each one was the size of a small melon, blood red, virtually seedless. Our would-be surgeon sliced them, one-two-three. We had not encountered such tomatoes before. "Beauties, aren't they?" asked Gabe.
Jack held to certain eccentricities in his summer food. Without fail he sprinkled sugar over tomatoes, sugared his melons no matter how ripe and spread his corn with mustard- mustard!”
― Eleanor Widmer, Up from Orchard Street

“I reached for the two beefsteak tomatoes in the grocery bag. The shade of their skins bore a hint of orange, indicating the firmness of the juicy flesh within. My sharp blade sliced into the fruit: dripping, sticky, dotted with the jeweled seeds inside. I cut the flesh into tiny cubes as the scent of sunshine and vines filled the air. I transferred the tomatoes to a ceramic bowl before rinsing the board and knife clean.
Using the flat side of the blade, I smashed three cloves of garlic. The fragrant aroma teased my nostrils as I rolled a fat red onion onto the board. The papery amaranthine skin crinkled under my fingertips.
According to Ma-ma, the red onion contained too much chi, the reason it caused so many tears. She compared the red onion to Younger Shen- rich in color and bold in flavor. I never questioned her logic, for no other onion induced the same reaction.”
― Roselle Lim, Natalie Tan's Book of Luck & Fortune

“The big growers are not evil. They are worried about the same thing they've always been worried about: this year's crop. They want it to be big and they don't want it to get wiped out by some insect or fungus. The last thing they think about is flavor because no one is paying so much as a penny extra for flavor. The growers sell to the wholesalers, who are also hooked on quantity because their customers, the supermarkets, sell tomatoes to consumers who think everything should cost 99 cents per pound and who've never known anything other than cardboard tomatoes.”
― Mark Schatzker, The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor

“A village becomes a town when a tomato trades before it reaches the belly.”
― Mantaranjot Mangat, Plotless

“I let Annabel show me how to do it, and together we planted the tomatoes. Once I'd done one or two, I discovered that I liked it, and that furthermore tomato plants smelled good. Not a pretty smell, but an interesting one, peppery and green. I could smell it on my hands, and in the sunny air.”
― Abbi Waxman, The Garden of Small Beginnings

“Diana loosened a sliver of halibut with her fork and slipped it into her mouth. She closed her eyes, tasting the sweetness of the fish; the tart, juicy tomatoes; oil and butter and garlic and thyme.
"Good?" asked Reese. His eyes were dark brown behind his glasses, and there was a deep dimple in his left cheek.
She chewed and swallowed. "So good." He was still watching her, clearly expecting more. "I don't even like fish, usually. But this- it's so sweet! The tomatoes..."
"They're from a farm in Truro. They turn into jam when you reduce them. They're my favorite," he said, voice lowered, like he was telling her a secret, or like he didn't want to hurt the figs' or the bok choy's feelings. "We source as many of our ingredients locally as we can. Our milk and eggs, our butter, our honey- everything we can get from around here, we do.”
― Jennifer Weiner, That Summer

“Tomatoes should be accorded with respect, for without them, Christmas stew wouldn’t exist.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Song of a Nature Lover

“In a biological sense, a fruit is the developed ovary of a plant (the vessel that holds the plant's eggs), and examining a fruit gives clues about its past struggles. Before humans, the red flesh of strawberries was a decoy for flyby nibbles from birds. Avocados appealed to elephant-like creatures called gomphotheres, which had intestines wide enough for the animals to swallow the fruit and excrete its hefty seed somewhere else. The day gomphotheres went extinct, thankfully no one told avocados. Nine thousand years passed before the Aztecs invented guacamole.
As for what constitutes a fruit in 2018, sweetness has little to do with it. Tomatoes are fruits, but so are eggplants, peppers, and olives. Peanuts and almonds and walnuts are fruits. So are parts of the world's six top crops---wheat, corn, rice, barley, sorghum, and soy. Oftentimes, things that masquerade as vegetables, like pea pods, are definitely fruits. Which is not to cast shade at vegetables; they are, by definition,almostfruits. To botanists, vegetables are any other edible part of the plant that doesn't contain seeds. Roots, such as carrots, potatoes, and parsnips, are vegetables. Lettuces are seedless, so they're vegetables, too, as is garlic.”
― Daniel Stone, The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats

“I got up from the table and stepped to the cabinet above Mom's mixer, absently brushing off a layer of dust as I reached up. I found the jar I needed, musing that it was probably years old and tasteless---but still worth a try.
"What are you doing?"
"Hang on a sec." I clenched the jar in my fist and shook the spice into my hand, pinching a bit across his lasagna.
"What's that?"
"Trust me, it's just what it needs---a touch of earth and sweet to temper the tomato's bite. With fresh tomatoes you need less as summer approaches and they develop their own sugars. Taste it."
He took a bite. "It's fantastic. What'd you add?"
"Cinnamon." He didn't recognize it?
"Amazing. I'll have to tell Mary."
"Tell her a touch of milk tempers the acidity as well."
"Interesting.”
― Katherine Reay, Lizzy and Jane

“I looked expectantly to the window but there were no plates lined up. Instead Scott, the young, tattooed sous chef, passed me a sliver of tomato. The insides were tie-dyed pink and red.
"A Marvel-Striped from Blooming Hills Farm," he said, as if I had asked him a question.
I cupped it while it dripped. He pinched up flakes of sea salt from a plastic tub and flicked it on the slice.
"When they're like this don't fuck with them. Just a little salt."
"Wow," I said. And I meant it. I had never thought of a tomato as a fruit----the ones I had known were mostly white in the center and rock hard. But this was so luscious, so tart I thought it victorious. So----some tomatoes tasted like water, and some tasted like summer lightning.”
― Stephanie Danler, Sweetbitter

“I walked in and closed my eyes as I ran my hands over the leaves of the tomato plants. I brought my fingers to my nose, breathing in the grassy, earthy freshness. It was no wonder the French cosmetic brand L'Occitane en Provence had found a way to capture this aroma in one of their hand creams.”
― Samantha Verant, Sophie Valroux's Paris Stars

“Wait, is that...
... a Calzone?! "
*A calzone is meat and cheese folded together in a pouch of pizza dough, depending on the area of Italy, calzones are either baked or deep-fried.
"Aren't calzones usually stuffed with salami, mozzarella cheese and other pizza toppings?"
"Ah, I know!
Yes, I was right! This calzone is stuffed with curry! Then this dish is "Italian-Style Curry Bread!"
Oh-ho!This dish is already interesting, being so different from all the others! Now let's see what it tastes like. "
"Mph!Th-this flavor... tomatoes?
The curry is bursting with the rich tanginess of tomatoes! "
"Yep.
I made that curry using only water I extracted from tomatoes. "
"Tomato water only?!
Are you saying you used no other liquid in this curry at all?! "
Yes, sir! See, if you stuff a pot full of tomatoes and turn on the heat, you can get a surprising amount of water out of them. I blended a special mix of spices that works with the tart tomato water...
... and made a thick curry sauce that's full of the rich flavor of tomatoes.
The crust is a sourdough I made using my family's handmade, natural grape yeast too. "
The outer crust is crispy and flakey...
...while the inside is chewy and mildly sweet. ”
― Yūto Tsukuda, Thực kích のソーマ 7 [Shokugeki no Souma 7]

“You say tomato, I say kumato. You say campari, I say a berry!”
― James Hauenstein

“The Provençal tomato is a thing of wonder--- it can be as small as a marble, large as a human heart, red like a valentine, yellow like a sunflower, pale green like a brand-new leaf, orange like the sun in a child's drawing. My favorite is thenoire de Crimée,a tomato that's purply-olive, like seaweed seen through moving water.”
― Elizabeth Bard, Picnic in Provence: A Memoir with Recipes

“There's no messing with perfection. (Okay, a little messing, just for fun.) A few crystals of coarse sea salt, a drizzle of local olive oil, and a sprig or two of purple basil. Sliced and layered in a white ceramic dish, the tomatoes often match the hues of the local sunsets--- reds and golds, yellows and pinks. If there were such a thing in our house as" too pretty to eat, "this would be it. Thankfully, there's not.
If I'm not exactly cooking, I have done some impromptu matchmaking: baby tomatoes with smoked mozzarella, red onions, fennel, and balsamic vinegar. A giant yellow tomato with a local sheep's milk cheese and green basil. Last night I got a little fancy and layered slices of beefsteak tomato with pale green artichoke puree and slivers of Parmesan. I constructed the whole thing to look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I love to think of the utterly pretentious name this would be given in a trendy Parisian bistro:
Millefeuille de tomate provençale, tapenade d'artichaut et coppa de parmesan d'Italie (AOC) sur son lit de salade, sauce aigre douce aux abricots.
And of course, since this is a snooty Parisian bistro and half their clientele are Russian businessmen, the English translation would be printed just below:
Tomato napoleon of artichoke tapenade and aged Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese on a bed of mixed greens with sweet-and-sour apricot vinaigrette.
Thesauce abricotwas a happy accident. While making the dressing for the green salad, I mistook a bottle of peach/apricot syrup for the olive oil. Since I didn't realize my mistake until it was at the bottom of the bowl, I decided to try my luck. Mixed with Dijon mustard and some olive oil, it was very nice--- much sweeter than a French vinaigrette, more like an American-style honey Dijon. I decided to add it to my pretentious Parisian bistro dish because, believe it or not, Parisian bistros love imitating American food. Anyone who has been in Paris in the past five years will note the rise of le Tchizzberger. (That's bistro for "cheeseburger." )
I'm moderate in my use of social media, but I can't stop taking pictures of the tomatoes. Close up, I've taken to snapping endless photos of the voluptuously rounded globes. I rejoice in the mingling of olive oil and purply-red flesh. Basil leaves rest like the strategically placed tassels of high-end strippers. Crystals of sea salt catch the afternoon sun like rhinestones under the glaring lights of the Folies Bergère. I may have invented a whole new type of food photography: tomato porn.”
― Elizabeth Bard, Picnic in Provence: A Memoir with Recipes