Reading · Tales from the Veg Patch by Kathy Slack

Welcome to Hero Harvest. Are you ready to geek out? This month’s peak season superstar is….. tomatoes.

So grab a fork (garden and eating) and join us as we explore how to grow it, classic flavour pairings, endless recipe ideas & new ways to put it centre stage.

As usual, we’ve divided our geekery into two instalments:

Part 1 - eating: a proper love-in glossy magazine feature (which is no less than these veg deserve) of recipes and beautiful images that give each harvest its moment in the spotlight. Got a glut? Need inspiration? This one’s for you.

Part 2 - creating: Pull up a chair for lunch and join us behind the scenes for a video conversation in which we share tips on how we created, cooked and captured the star veg. If you’re into the creative process (of recipe development and photography), we’ve got lots to show you.

Recipes are all created by Kathy Slack with pics by Kirstie Young.

We hope you’re hungry.

Love,

“Bit niche”, comes the reply. Kirstie Young is, of course, right. Fennel flowers might be the most abundant thing in the new Welsh veg patch at the moment, but even we would struggle to make them into a compelling hero harvest.

You may be here for the fringes of seasonal geekery, but battered fennel flowers is esoteric even by our standards.

This is the first Hero Harvest we’ve shot from the new farmhouse in Monmouthshire. It’s a wild and beautiful Eden, and it’s so exciting to be able to give you a sense of the place in this edition. (Tune in for the regular Hero Harvest BTS video in a fortnight when we’ll be discussing in more detail how we go about shooting in a new space.)

And, whilst there’s been a lot of weeding, there’s been very little gardening and even less rain since the move began, so harvests are snaffled, opportunistic raids on whatever was here already and happens to raise its head above the weeds – perennial kale, blackcurrants, rhubarb, and, of course, fennel flowers.

By some miracle, there turns out to be an organic market garden not 5 minutes from the house. And, as that wasn’t enough, they deliver. Given that DPD can barely deliver to the end of this remote, untarmacked valley, and Ocado won’t even try, this seems wondrous, bordering on divine.

The latest delivery is a crate of tomatoes so juicy, taught-skinned and crimson, they are almost obscene. These will be out heroes. They arrived ready for their close up and we will gladly give them the spotlight (or, more accurately, the moody half-light of the pantry).

Raw. In August and September, top quality tomatoes should be served raw. No need to faff around, just get them on a plate. Room temperature please. At most, the citric acidy of raw tomatoes can take a hint of green dressing, but no more or you detract from the wonder biting into of a just-picked, sun-warmed, soft-fleshed tomato as the juices dribble down your chin.

Roasting concentrates the flavour and is a great way to deal with tomatoes that might be a tad watery or underwhelming because it removes the water and caramelises the sugars that are left. Never make a tomato sauce, passata or tomato soup without roasting the tomatoes first.

Pickling. The recipe for whole pickled tomatoes below might seem odd, at first but when you pop a cherry tomato gobstobber in your mouth and it bursts you will be converted by the sweet-but-sour explosion that can pep up virtually any dish from salad to pasta.

You’ll find a whole chapter on tomatoes in From the Veg Patch, and here are some others to keep you going:

Tomatoes stuffed with mackerel

Tomato salad with burrata

Tomato shots

Apparently this summer is an 80s summer. And so, fittingly, if accidentally, the menu turns out to be all rather retro.

First up, stuffed tomatoes. But not stuffed with rice and breadcrumbs (which always seemed laboured, even in the eighties.) The magic in this stuffing is the combination of that classic Italian triumvirate -capers/pinenuts/sultanas – with meaty tomatoes. You can serve it as a salad if you’d rather not stuff by simply chopping any tomatoes into the mackerel and grains mixture and serving it in a bowl. The effect is much the same. Mackerel has now sadly questionable sustainability credentials, but herring makes a fine alternative if you can’t find, or don’t believe in, sustainable mackerel.

Then, the ultimate tomato salad. Let’s not call it ‘tomatoes 3 ways’ because it makes the dish sound like the creation of a desperate 80s chef with too much hair gel and an obsession with Michelin stars that’s as unhealthy as his cholesterol levels.

But really, it is just that: three different preparations of tomatoes that produce radically different flavours – sherbet sour from pickling, caramel sweetness from dehydrating, and fresh acidity. And that’s the pleasure of this dish – tomatoes in all their technicolour varieties of flavour, texture and colour.

Finally, that 80s chef would turn in his (for it was then invariable a he) grave of washed-up obscurity at this tomato shot recipe because, done ‘correctly’, this tomato water should be translucent. But to achieve this the wastage on the tomatoes is mountainous and the effort disproportionate and, anyway, I like the cloudy look in this cocktail setting – it makes the drink seem more like a light evening Bloody Mary. Serve it neat with an ice cube or spike with a slug of vodka. Hold the Tabasco though, it masks the intense vine fragrance, like a liquidised greenhouse. (And save the pulp too, it makes a very serviceable pasta sauce for those unfussed by seeds.)

We hope you enjoy making these retro recipes for a summer’s evening in the garden. Shoulder pads are optional. Please send us pics of what you make (especially if you do opt for shoulder pads).

HERO HARVEST #6: Tomatoes

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