Tomato restoration
Careful farming is bringing back the juicy flavor of summers past
Tomato season is upon us, and the threat of that most disappointing of summer romances - when one after another of those shapely, flawlessly complexioned beauties piled in the produce bins and even some farm stands turns out bland and soulless. If summer corn is one of the great successes of modern US agriculture, a fresh tomato is too often among its dreariest failures.
The re-introduction of heirloom varieties over the last several years has helped the situation. At their best, heirlooms and even the attendant foodie fuss remind us that its high-stepping flavor is the point of eating a raw tomato. But an heirloom name is no guarantee of tastiness. Jim Wilker, a co-owner and buyer for Specialty Foods Boston, a supplier to New England restaurants, says that as heirlooms have progressed from "rare to ubiquitous," quality has suffered from the brusque demands of the market. Indeed, I just sliced a cute zebra variety from the grocery store; imported from Canada, it was juiceless and only a little sweeter and more flavorful than one of those pink whiffle balls that come up from Florida in the winter.
Pedigree isn't enough. Whether heirlooms or hybrids, tomatoes can indeed be bred for flavor, but they must also be assiduously farmed to bring them to their height. Farmers, of course, must keep their fingers crossed for good growing weather, and what's good weather for tomatoes changes as they mature; then, when it comes time to harvest, the growers work to hard, unbucolic deadlines. A field tomato ripens - truly ripens - on an unrelenting schedule. Flavor-demanding consumers with rising hopes for a Tomato Restoration must look to the serious grower to lead it. For the time being, that means mostly local and smallish farmers. We talked to two such recently.
Tim Garboski, who supplies tomatoes to the Cambridge restaurants T.W. Food and Craigie Street Bistrot, among others, is showing me around Grateful Farm in Franklin, which he owns. A week before, I ask him over the phone if there is a "secret" to growing flavorful tomatoes; there is an utterly ingenuous pause, then when pressed, Garboski cites "the soil." When I later ask him about the role of sunlight in tomato growing, he says, "It's good." For a voluble guy, Garboski seems to like understatement. He opens up when he talks enthusiastically about organic practices, which he follows, though he is not certified organic. He discusses rainfall - sometimes good, sometimes actually detrimental, depending on the tomato plants' stage of development. Today, he is fervently hoping for precipitation, rain having hop-scotched over his acreage for days now.
It is the 20th of July, a few weeks away from the beginning of tomato harvest. We are observing, as nearly as human eyes can, 2 acres of tomatoes, a couple of thousand plants, develop their acids and sugars and aromatic compounds. The plants include some varieties that Garboski is auditioning but will reject if they don't meet his flavor standards. Think of the tomatoes as chugging along at a very slow simmer - in the course of a sunny day, the pulp can reach temperatures higher than the surrounding air.
It's muggy, but the soil is dry, and Garboski tells me that if it doesn't rain soon, he will have to go to a nearby farm pond and drive back water in barrels to supply his drip-irrigation hoses. As I leave, he hands me a list of the two dozen tomato varieties he is growing, some heirlooms, some hybrids. It includes lower-acid yellow tomatoes, which some customers prefer, though Garboski confesses he personally finds these bland. Along with the sugar, he says, he craves acid, enough to practically "blister my lips."
I don't ask how much acid he likes, but Eero Ruuttila of certified-organic Nesenkeag Farm in Litchfield, N.H., tells me he is a big fan of heirlooms, among them Cherokee Purple, German Johnson, Brandywine, and Yellow Persimmon. He says genetics are all-important to flavor and that if he raises a healthy specimen of this "finicky plant," it will "express" (yep, just like a zinfandel grower) that potential. Among Nesenkeag's restaurant customers are Rialto, Henrietta's Table, andRadius.
Tomatoes, though treated as vegetables, are climacteric fruits. When physiological changes trigger them into ripening, that ripening is comparatively rapid, and continues after picking. If they are allowed to develop on the vine and picked at near-maximum ripeness, says Ruuttila, they have a three- to five-day window of optimum flavor and texture.
Garboski and Ruuttila and other such growers work right on top of this curve of flavor, a curve that rises rapidly, then, within days, falls, as utter ripeness turns into rot. It is the growers' crucial attentiveness that enables them to optimize flavor, whether from hybrids or heirlooms. They pick, by hand, considerably later than the industry-standard "vine ripe," which is when the fruit is just beginning to blush. Ruuttila picks at "half color to three-quarter." As the fruit matures on the vine, the sugars are still on the increase. Flavor-wise, waiting makes "all the difference in the world," says Ruuttila.
Just a couple of days after Garboski, 50 miles away, was complaining about dryness, Ruuttila has the opposite problem - his tomatoes just got a thrashing from heavy rains. Closer to picking, both farmers will hope against downpours, and, if irrigating, they actually curtail water to the plants. They don't want the fruit to sponge up water, which can both dilute flavor and cause the skin to split. Ruuttila thinks that the particular stress of "dry farming" increases sugar.
Even after careful picking, the tomatoes do not go right onto a delivery truck. If they did, Garboski and Ruuttila might get more sleep. They've husbanded the tomatoes to sweetness before picking, and now, off the vine, the fruit is continuing to ripen. Within a day or two, the growers must now "grade" the tomatoes - that is, cull the ripest of what's been picked. Those tomatoes go right to market within the day, often within hours. Garboski says grading sometimes keeps him up till 1 a.m. on a morning that he ships.
If there is a secret to tomato flavor, it's in Garboski's fingertips, and Ruuttila's. There's no flavor gauge to stick in a near-ripe tomato. Grading is done by feel. Ruuttila's hand is seeking a "firmness but not mushiness" that he recognizes from experience. For other tasks, Ruuttila and his crew may wear latex gloves for hygiene. But he strips them off for grading, and insists that other graders do the same. He does almost all his own grading; Garboski says he's never been able to teach anyone else.
The refinement of grading enables Ruuttila to include in a restaurant delivery one flat of tomatoes to be served the evening of their arrival, along with other flats selected to ripen over the next couple of days. Garboski takes to market, along with his best, tomatoes that have cracks or blemishes or are overripe. He sells these as much cheaper seconds, what he calls "canners" (see soup recipe).
Neither grower refrigerates tomatoes, which extends shelf life but destroys flavor. (Garboski is dismayed to sometimes watch a shipment disappear into a restaurant's walk-in.) Refrigeration of tomatoes is common in high-volume marketing. But then, what Garboski and Ruuttila do is what so much of the industry cannot, or does not: They select varieties for flavor rather than indestructibility; they do not pick so early that the fruit, though it reddens, will never develop flavor; they serve buyers close enough that they can deliver within a day, or even hours, of grading; those buyers are the users, not wholesalers, who would mean delay.
Of course, they are not martyrs. Although his passion for quality is obvious, when Ruuttila says he's "more interested in flavor than yield," he is not being holy, he is laying out a business model: He hopes to sell his fewer tomatoes at a higher price and keep consumer interest high through consistent excellence.
It's true that even grocery-store tomatoes have improved. They're at least redder than they used to be, and sometimes actually riper. Hothouse tomatoes from Holland can be pretty good, but pretty good is hardly the gold standard for a fruit that is capable of brilliance. Cherry tomatoes are a standby for much of the year. Grape tomatoes are consistently the sweetest on the shelves, but all that sugar can overwhelm the acid; inherently, most grapes lack the exclamatory quality of well-balanced fruit. And there is a gourmandizing lushness to slicing and eating a full-size tomato that the miniatures cannot provide.
This time of year, it would be feckless to buy tomatoes at the grocery store. Head for the farms, farm stands, and in-town farmers' markets. There, if the growers have stayed on top of the flavor curve, you'll find the tastes you're looking for, maybe even the ones you recall from childhood. The flavor of most good tomatoes is balanced between acids and sugars - the palate's brass and woodwinds. But there are other essential performers that develop in the ripening process, aromatic compounds, some appearing in only minute amounts, that define what we taste; these aromatics are what is characteristic, particular about the flavor of a given fruit, whether tomato or banana. We perceive acid (sour) and sugar (sweet) with the tongue; the aromatics with the olfactory bulb, those molecules having traveled through both nose and back of throat.
Hundreds of aromatic compounds have been identified in tomatoes, with a dozen or two thought to significantly affect flavor. The compounds have knotty names like Z-3-hexanal - which untangles appealingly into "cut grass," according to Russ Parsons in "How to Pick a Peach." Along with other aromatic notes such as "rose" and "caramel," they combine to make the taste of a properly ripened tomato, both mellow-sweet and jangly, so vibrant it might set off a tuning fork.
You can buy Grateful Farm tomatoes at farmers' markets in Harvard Square, Cambridgeport, Kendall Square, Arlington, and Franklin (go to www.state.ma.us/dfa/massgrown/farmers_markets.htm for details). The farm is located at 49 Prospect St., Franklin; there is no farmstand, but customers are welcome on Fridays and Saturdays. Nesenkeag Farm tomatoes are sold at Formaggio Kitchen, 244 Huron Ave., Cambridge, 617-354-4750; and South End Formaggio, 268 Shawmut Ave., Boston, 617-350-6996. 