So what is that high art of making a tomato sauce? Dive in; place Super Ripe Tomatoes in a heavy cast iron pan, wok, etc. add olive oil. Cover the pan with a lid or an orphan lid now bereft of a pan. Turn up the heat and cook until said tomatoes crack open.
One can further the disruption of surface, by crushing the tomatoes with a purposeful mallet.
In this instance, we started the cooking process with about 4 lbs of tomatoes, divided it in half after the heating, it seemed a lot to handle; then we went to work with the mallet on half; keeping the other half for that another occasion. That special term: “locally sourced” is a little too tardy for us; the tomatoes were purchased from a wonderful local Dominican bodega, which identified the source as a wholesaler in the South Bronx. The tomatoes had been out in the sun for days and were presented on little Styrofoam trays, wrapped in Clingfilm, a presentation to soften the nearing expiration look of freshness about them. These fit the bill for “Super Ripe Tomatoes,” i.e., red, red and softening to the touch, maybe even dehydrating.
We added, Black Pepper, Oregano, Bay Leaves, and Brown Sugar. Play around with quantities until you find what you like.
We prefer the taste of that Brown Cane Sugar, which is sold in blocks, and one persuades into solution with heat and love. Did not use it here though.
Aging overnight, just builds the taste.
Remember to try and keep the Bay Leaves whole so you can easily take them out prior to serving to humans. Or maybe pieces of Bay Leaves are your thing.
The Black Pepper, Oregano, Bay Leaves, and Brown Sugar can be added to the pan at the point of heating the tomatoes or in any chronological order you wish. The Bay Leaves do not stay whole in the presence of crushing. Get ready to pick your teeth.
So, you can do Google searches up the Khyber, you can check out Wikipedia but the only way to get the unequivocal lowdown on the species having the tomato as one of its members, is that wonderful and somewhat wonkish site run by NCBI, Gene Expression Omnibus Dataset Browser, Grrrrrrrr! Could they not have made this site a little more fun?
The tomato is a member of the Solanaceae species; there are six other members:
Pepper (Capsicum annuum); Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum); Nicotiana (Nicotiana benthamiana); Petunia (Petunia x hybrida); Eggplant (Solanum melongena); Potato (Solanum tuberosum)
Did we intuitively know this, maybe ... We loved how the potato (Solanum tuberosum) was described as the "platform organism." All Hail The Potato.
The citation for the reference article is: Rensink et al.Comparative analyses of six solanaceous transcriptomes reveal a high degree of sequence conservation and species-specific transcripts. BMC Genomics 2005 Sep 14; 6:124. PMID: 16162286
They missed out, eggplant, and we are not checking out why.
So Tomato, Pepper, Tobacco …, are related one to another, if only Linnaeus had had access to DNA analysis.
That other beautiful text, The Botanical Garden: Volume II: Perennials and Annuals by Phillips and Rix, attaches the name of Miller to the tomato, as in Lycopersicon Miller, but we can not see any good reason for doing this, for as usual, the English, I mean Scottish, character, is a “Johnny Come Lately” event on the Tomato Scene. Messer Philip Miller, among many fine actions, made the “Chelsea Physic Garden” blossom -“Physic” means health here-, and in 1752 described the tomato as much used in soups in his time. OMG. Our skin did go through the moments of repulsion when we read that Miller developed and sent the first long-strand cotton seeds to the then British colony of Georgia in 1733; oh that need for commerce and profit and slavery. Anyway, our objective, was to firmly keep the tomato connected to Mexico, Peru, Central America, Viva Zapata, Shinning Path and the like; no, let’s stick with Tomatoes.
The word tomato comes from a word in the Nahuatl language,tomatl. Nahuatl is a group of related languages, including dialects, of the Nahuan (aka "Aztecan") branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. The tomato has been identified as originating from the Andean region; that is now post the miscreant Spanish colonization carved up between Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru. (See Sims WL. History of tomato production for industry around the world. Acta Horticulturae (1980) 100: 25–26) We just new a Sims would be covering it.
The time and place of the domestication of the tomato are not clearly known; we find this a little sad because there are so many indicators that it is the Andean region … and salsa. Clear, unequivocal evidence of the domestication –selective breeding- of the tomato in the Andes, casting out those introductions that refer to Columbus, Cortez, as “discoverers” when the reality is that they were ill informed malfeasants is out there.
Wild Solanum species have been shown to have a nice bit of diversity going on. The challenge presented by the diversity of the tomato was engaged in the Andes and followed across the globe. The bottleneck on that journey is well described by Ranc et al, A clarified position for solanum lycopersicum var. cerasiforme in the evolutionary history of tomatoes (solanaceae) BMC Plant Biol. 2008 Dec 20; 8:130.
The cultivated tomato [] shows a large range of morphological diversity but low genetic diversity compared to other Solanum relatives []. This can be explained by successive bottlenecks:
(i) Domestication associated with isolation of the crop from the Andes (centre of diversity) to Central America,
(ii) Transfer of few cultivars to the Mediterranean basin by conquistadors in the 16th century and
(iii) Modern breeding [].
Cherry tomato, i.e. S. lycopersicum var. cerasiforme (S. l. cerasiforme), is the expected ancestor of the domesticated form. In its native Andean region, wild and feral forms can be found and S. l. cerasiforme is also described as highly invasive []. [] In Coastal Ecuador and Peru, S. pimpinellifolium, genetically close to S. lycopersicum and strictly wild, is found growing in sympatry with tomato landraces and cherry tomato (and also with S. peruvianum and S. hirsutum, two green-fruited species).
From the paper, we interpreted the major bottleneck being that transfer to the Mediterranean basin by conquistadors. Our question is, what interesting wild and locally domesticated tomatoes remain in the Andes, the conquistadors were in too much of a hurry.
Other Notes: You have to love the Bumblebee; pollination of tomatoes is usually by Bumblebees.
What, no mention of Italy, Heirloom Tomatoes, Organic, GM Intervention and other things? Go figure.
AN ENDING OF SORTS AND A BEGINNING
