This is the time of year for less travelled tomatoes. When they are not in season, tomatoes may travel a couple of thousand kilometres to reach the shop, but in autumn our tomatoes will have travelled no further than Nick Mitsakis’s place in Kingston or Gary Hippman’s at Roches Beach.
Gary’s company Lafresh is the only one in Tasmania growing mini roma tomatoes called Flavorino, a Dutch patented variety.
Like the bigger romas, the mini version has fewer pips and a higher ratio of flesh to juice. The tiny romas look terrific arranged in a tart, especially if mixed with small yellow tomatoes for a jewel-box effect.
Tiny tomatoes of any shape contain more vitamin C and lycopene for their weight than bigger tomatoes. Gary said the tomatoes the Spanish brought back from the New World in the 16th century were smaller than a cherry tomato, had more lycopene and about 50 times the vitamin C of a modern tomato.
Lycopene is the bright red pigment that gives tomatoes (and watermelon, pink grapefruit and rosehip) their colour. In the body, lycopene acts as an antioxidant and gets points for reducing the risk of cancers, particularly prostate, and heart disease. Lycopene is most efficiently absorbed when it has been cooked with oil - so a pasta sauce is better than a juice.
Slow cooking and baking the tomatoes to be used in sauces will also enrich the taste - throw in some whole chillies, garlic or an anchovy or two as well - you won’t taste the anchovy but it will give the sauce depth.
Gary Hippman prunes his mini romas to eight to a plant. A truss weights 280 to 300g. “We go for high-quality tasty tomato, so we don’t achieve the yield that a lot of people do,” he said.
All Lafresh tomatoes are grown hydroponically in greenhouses. Gary says it is the most environmentally sensible way to go, as the water is recirculated and the only loss is through transpiration and so overall use of water is much less that when the plants are grown in soil.
And have you noticed truss tomatoes have the strongest “tomatoey” smell? Gary says the smell is coming from the stems and calyx - if you wash them they will smell the same as loose tomatoes. However, when tomatoes remain attached to the stem, maximum flavour is imparted back to them as the stem shrinks, and they will last longer.
Keep tomatoes in a bowl out of the fridge - refrigeration dulls the flavour.
Tomatoes go with: basil, bread, butter, cheese, chilli, cream, eggs, eggplant, garlic, olive oil, oregano, pasta, pizza, polenta, salt, thyme, zucchini.
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