Tomato / BoP lab 7.

The summary of the last test before the summer break is complete. This time Maki Stevenson, also known as Chef Maki came to our help and we worked with her at Makifood‘s kitchen. We managed to get a surprisingly large variety of tomatoes, although it’s important to note that all of these were grown in greenhouses (as of 15th, June, 2012). We’ll have to wait a bit for the open field tomatoes because they will only grow ripe around the end of July. However, thanks to Attila Nemes, we got a home-grown open field tomato that excelled at the raw tasting. Unfortunately due to its small quantity we didn’t have any more left for the other tests.

In general we can say that the intensity of the colour red isn’t always in line with the strength of the taste. This is mostly due to the fact that the modern foil methods create an artificial environment that allows all the parameters of the tomatoes to be controlled therefore colour doesn’t necessarily show the ripeness.

Just as we have seen with potatoes, it’s very important to know which variety we use for wich purposes. The same goes for tomatoes: some varieties are best used raw (for example “öcsödi”, the one we used in the test, and mostly the bigger, juicy types), while some serve better as juice or puree (for example lucullus or san marzano). Cherry tomatoes do well in dishes baked in the oven and those tomatoes that taste great raw should be the best for grilling in a pan. Black tomato proved to be the biggest surprise: it’s almost inedible raw but after cooking it turned out to be the winner both in taste and consistency.