Tomato

This post is dedicated to my favorite ingredient- TOMATO. This red plump veggie-full-of-goodness does wonders to your dish. It can accommodate any of your whims in terms of texture, taste, smell and even the look of your final plate. It can be prepared in any way and can be Incorporated in any part of your meal. Tomato is also widely viewed as a staple for Italian cooking so you will see a lot of tomatoes in this blog in the future- this is why it is important to know its history.

Tomato
- scientific name: "Solanum lycopersicum".

Tracing the history of Tomato, one will find a very big surprise- it is not Native in Europe where it is used so much in Italian cooking and Spanish cooking- in fact it is a Native of South America. They say that genetic evidence shows that the modern Tomato's progenitor were herbaceous green plants with small green fruit with a center of diversity in the highlands of Peru. In fact early Aztec writings show that tomato was consumed by their society and was usually prepared with pepper, corn and salt.

There is large disagreement as to how Tomato ended up in Europe, some say it was the explorer Cortez who first brought Tomato to Europe after he colonized the Aztec city of Tenochtítlan (Modern day New Mexico) in 1521. Some say that it was Christopher Columbus, an Italian working for Spain, who first brought back the fruity vegetable as early as 1493. So clearly there is a tug-of-war between Spain and Italy as to who brought it to Europe first, but one thing is settled though, it was Spain who distributed it through-out the world. Using its armada and trading power, Spain distributed tomato through out its colony from the Caribbean to the Philippines. It also became widely used in European cooking because it grew well in the Mediterranean climate. The first cook book to feature tomato as an ingredient was discovered in Naples dated 1692, but even here there is still uncertainty- some people claim that the author got the recipe fro Spanish sources. In Florence tomato was first widely used as a table-top decoration and was not incorporated into their dish until early 18th Century! Imagine eating Tuscany's Ossobuco without Tomato- that would be weired- although they did before they decided to use that tabletop decoration as an ingredient.

Tomato has two very basic flavors- sweet or sour (acidic). Now neither one is better than the other because it will all depend on what you want to achieve in your dish- but most commonly used is sweet. To get the sweetness out of the tomato the best approach is to grill it first before you puree it. Grilling takes away the acidity and leaves you only with its lovely sweetness. It is also a great ingredient to use for braising meat- like ossobuco. If using tomato as braising agent do not grill it, just chop them into small pieces and let it dissolve its juices in your pan. Tomato can also be eaten raw like in many salads. It has so many uses in so many different culinary traditions allowing it to become so widespread.

So, in short, tomato is a vegetable not a fruit.


***References:
- Wikipedia
- Marcela Hazan "Classical Italian Cooking"
- Antonio Carluccio "Simple Cooking"