No matter how old you are, tomatoes tasted better when you were younger. If you are 12 years old, that probably is only nostalgia, but if you are 42, changes in varieties, methods of growing and distribution over long distances come into play – as well as nostalgia.
Tomatoes used to be a treat of summer and autumn, now they are available all year round, but still, summer and autumn is when they are at their best. Tomatoes in our shops now are grown locally, instead of coming to us from thousands of kilometres away. Out of season, cherry tomatoes taste better than bigger ones. And for cooking, tomatoes canned at the height of summer are the way to go in winter.
Some say tomatoes grown out of doors taste better than those from greenhouses, but in Tasmania, the wait for the first crop and the chances of something going wrong before that time, mean field tomatoes are not a commercial proposition.
A gourmand also wants their tomato grown in soil rather than hydroponically, whereby the roots are in a little sand and all the nutrients are circulated in water.
One of our suppliers, Nick Mitsakis, who grows tomatoes at Kingston with his father Loukas, says very few commercial growers in Tasmania grow tomatoes any other way than hydroponically.
“Growing in a field is too hit-and-miss,†he said. “And about 80% of your water evaporates or goes somewhere else, with hydroponics everything goes to the right place.†And they can anticipate about 7 kilograms of each plant.
The Mitsakises plant in August and start picking the fruit in November, then plant again in December/January to have fruit right through to April.
Tomatoes go with: basil, bread, butter, chilli, cream, cucumber, eggs, garlic, olive oil, oregano, pasta, pizza, polenta, salt, thyme…
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