Seed Capital
Heirloom tomatoes are much more than a menu item du jour or a glorious still life at the local farmers' market. They are part and parcel of preserving our agricultural heritage. Katy Keiffer reviews the definitive new book on the subject.
| More 'Food Faces Change' articles in this issue |
| The Price Is Fright Is America's reliance on cheap food over? Looks that way, as an onrush of complex factors unloose a perfect storm of spiraling costs. Agriculture policy and World Bank veteran August Schumacher Jr., recipient of this month's Silver Spoon Award, scrutinizes the spinning weather vane with an eye to the future. |
| The Price of Purity Convinced that an ever greening public is willing to pay a little more, a young Argentine restaurateur is determined to take his organic concept national. |
| Awake at the Switch At a conference in Spain assessing the effects of global warming on wine production, Alan Tardi discovers that what's bad news for some is good news for others. |
| In for the Short Haul Careening fuel costs and demand for eco-friendly product are causing sharp swerves on the food distribution highway. Katy Keiffer spots some green lights at the end of long-distance tunnels. |
| Staving Off Extinction Biodiversity is more than a catchword, a liberal conceit, or a sentimental love of nature. It's a matter of life and death. Pulitzer Prize winning science editor Holcomb B. Noble reviews the new definitive work on the subject. |
| Plowing Toward Utopia Christopher Styler reports on the efforts to transform the American farm into a model of environmental enlightenment, community good, impeccable ethics, and, yes, gainful employment. |
| Massing Links Judith Weinraub speaks with environmentalist and social activist Paul Hawken about offtrack food practices and policies and what can be done to reverse them. |
| Weather Watch Agriculture savant Frederick Kirschenmann assesses the potential effects of climate change on farming in the United States and ways to ensure adequate food supplies in the future. |
| Silver Spoon August Schumacher Jr. |
At this time of year, the tomato seems as elusive as a unicorn. Confronted with the anemic fragrance-free unlikable specimens available now, it's hard to imagine the luxurious feast of tomatoes that will soon be crowding the farmers' markets. Amy Goldman's new book, The Heirloom Tomato from Garden to Table: Recipes, Portraits, and History of the World's Most Beautiful Fruit will tide you over until the first currant tomatoes begin to ripen.
The Heirloom Tomato boasts the extraordinary talents of photographer Victor Schrager, with whom author and seed saver Amy Goldman has collaborated on her previous two books, The Compleat Squash and Melons for the Passionate Grower. It would be easy to categorize The Heirloom Tomato as a fabulous coffee-table book of incredible photos, but that would be doing it, and Amy Goldman, a great disservice.
In fact, The Heirloom Tomato is a continuation of her important work as a leader in the fight to preserve American agricultural diversity. As director and chair of the board of the Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa, Goldman has testified before Congress on the imperative to revive heirloom breeds of fruits and vegetables as part of the overall effort to maintain healthy crops, biodiversity, and most importantly to preserve our flavor heritage. The industrially bred, machine cultivated tomato crops sold in grocery stores bear little resemblance to the glorious variety of flavors, colors, and textures available to growers and described in these pages.
As Goldman says in her introduction, "My 35 years as a gardener, coupled with considerable book learning, have taught me that heirlooms, ripened on the vine in full sun, are the most delicious tomatoes of all."
In The Heirloom Tomato, Goldman has traced the history of 500 varieties of tomato. She has grown each one of these varieties, not once, but twice, in order to confirm consistent results. In all she tried out a thousand varieties of seed before winnowing them down to the selection here. Each tomato variety is broken down into size and weight, shape, colors (interior and exterior), flavor, sugar content (Brix degrees), texture, best uses, plant habit or when it matures, and origins, i.e., its pedigree. This information is followed by a history of the plant, when it was first cultivated and by whom (often a hundred or more years ago), and ultimately, how it came to her garden.
The names of the tomatoes alone make for great menu entertainment: Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter, or Banana Legs, or Nebraska Wedding. We also learn that the Mortgage Lifter spawned a whole slew of Mortgage Lifters varietals. The Brandywine, one of the better known varieties of heirlooms, got its start in 1889. It was sent to Johnson and Stokes, a seed purveyor at the time, by a customer in Ohio who proffered the seeds, requesting a fair test in their trial grounds. "To our astonishment, it completely eclipsed, in great size and beauty, all other varieties we were testing, several specimens when ripe weighing over three pounds each, as smooth as an apple and remarkably solid." The Brandywine disappeared for many decades, apparently, but was reintroduced in 1989 as the Red Brandywine by Heirloom Seeds in West Elizabeth, Pennsylvania. Factoids such as these should be incentive enough to devour this book. Not every tomato is as generously detailed as the Brandywine, but learning the varietals' backstories is both satisfying and useful.
Goldman also includes 55 recipes for tomatoes, including Thai tomato cocktail and white peach/tomato galette, then moving on to more conventional offerings along the lines of colorful gazpacho with three varieties of tomato, mouthwatering cherry tomato/garlic bread soup, or grilled snapper with corn/green tomato salad.
The Heirloom Tomato winds up with a page of advocacy groups, all working toward maintaining our agricultural heritage. Those who wish to grow some of these tomatoes themselves can turn to these resources for more information on obtaining seed and cultivation particulars.
Goldman makes a powerful case for experiencing all the wonderful varieties of the tomato—a range of flavors, colors, and shapes so galvanizing they should make any chefs worth their sea salt rush out and get busy with vermiculite and potting soil. The aesthetic and sensual pleasures of these luscious fruits, beautifully described in this volume, to my mind, makes The Heirloom Tomato a future candidate for heirloom status itself.
