Nigel Slater, TV cook, bestselling cookery author and food columnist for The Observer, has joined the RHS grow your own campaign.
In this series, Nigel focuses on the best produce for growing and cooking
Nigel's tomato recipes
Discover Nigel's tomato recipes for June:
Tomatoes
Nigel Slater makes the most of freshly cropped tomatoes from his garden.
I have grown tomatoes for a decade or more, first in pots on my kitchen windowsill, then from growing-bags on a tiny terrace and now in the garden, their feet well and truly in the earth. Rather than getting the care and attention demanded by my runner beans or squashes, I find tomato plants often thrive on neglect. Their flavour seems all the richer and sweeter when they have been starved of a drink or are left to bake for a day or two in dry soil.
There is so much to do in early spring that I buy my supply as plug plants. The seedlings arrive in early April and are immediately transferred to pots filled with compost. They go into the cold frame against a warm wall with the lid closed at night until all fear of frost has gone. Once the weather warms up and the plants are about 20cm (8in) in height, I transfer them either into the garden or into 40cm (16in) diameter terracotta pots.
Fresh from the garden
While the first to ripen – normally the cherry cultivars such as the ever-reliable ‘Gardener’s Delight’ – are usually wolfed then and there in the garden, I always get a few simple salads in before I start to cook with them. A couple of early, striped ‘Tigerella’ warm from the sun, thickly sliced and trickled with olive oil is probably my most looked-forward-to salad of the year. Even after all these years I feel a certain sense of pride in producing a ripe ‘Auriga’ or a ‘Green Zebra’ with its flashes of bright and dark green. I usually add some torn basil leaves or perhaps a little fresh oregano. The point is really to enjoy the sweet-sharp simplicity of the fruit itself. Cool milky cheeses such as mozzarella or feta are a traditional partnership for ripe tomatoes, but I should like to put in a word for softer varieties like Taleggio or St Marcellin.
All tomatoes are suitable for cooking, but those with plenty of flesh and not too many seeds seem to work best. The seedier cultivars can produce a lot of watery liquid during cooking that needs boiling down. I don’t go along with those who entirely discard the seeds and their jelly when they cook, as there is much flavour there; but a tomato without too many is probably ideal.
Plum selections such as ‘Roma’, traditionally used in the tomato-heavy cuisines of Italy and Spain, are useful because their tough flesh keeps its shape when stuffed and baked. They break down slowly in a sauce, but I find their flavour less rich than some of the plump, round tomatoes such as ‘Marmande’, ‘Brandywine’ and ‘Costoluto Fiorentino’. These large, red tomatoes grow well outside, coping with most things except long periods of warm wet weather, which allows tomato blight to run amok.
Getting the best flavour
My most successful small cultivar in terms of yield and flavour is ‘Sungold’, possibly because of its snap of acidity that stays with it even when it is fully ripe.
Some tomatoes disappoint and lack the necessary sweetness or piquancy to be useful in a salad. These are fine for cooking with and will often be surprisingly full flavoured if they are cooked slowly. A long-simmered tomato sauce can be a good way to use up lacklustre fruit. The two ingredients that can pep up a less-than-exciting harvest are sugar and vinegar. I use red wine vinegar in my tomato sauce, the muted sharpness bringing out all the character of the fruit. A spoonful of sugar can liven up even the most insipid specimen. Just a tiny pinch to an oil and vinegar dressing can give surprising results.
Tomatoes bask in warm, dry surroundings, both in the fierce heat of the garden in August, and in the oven. Either will concentrate their flavour and juices. At the end of the season I am often left with straggly brown skeletons and a few remaining, not-quite-ripe fruits. These should not be thrown away. I remove the dying plant from the soil and hang it up in the kitchen. The warmth will ripen any stragglers on the vine giving them a surprisingly concentrated flavour.
Fried green tomatoes
Green tomatoes are a perennial problem for the home grower. My favourite treatment is to slice any green tomato thickly and press it down first in a saucer of lightly beaten egg, swiftly followed by one of fine cornmeal (polenta). Fried in shallow olive oil, the tomato softens while the crust becomes crisp; it is good with a spoonful of garlic mayonnaise or aïoli.