Heirloom tomato tome takes aim at agribusiness

Tag : tomato
NEW YORK - Amy Goldman's gorgeously photographed ode to heirloomtomatoes arrived late this summer with all the jaw-dropping beautyof a coffee table tome. But like her previous volumes on disappearing varieties of melonsand squash, "The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table" carries afrightening message. Goldman, a self-described "vegetable activist," has written animpassioned call to amateur gardeners to reclaim the odd, eccentricand delicious tomato plants whose very existence has beenthreatened by industrialized agriculture. "Heirloom tomatoes are designed to be homegrown," she said recentlyfrom her Rhinebeck, N.Y., farm, where she was taking a break fromharvesting a tomato crop delayed for a few weeks by this summer'sunusually abundant rainfall. "These are the people's tomato - of,by and for the people." This marks Goldman's third book about heirloom vegetables, whichare varieties whose seeds have been handed down from generation togeneration of farmer. Part One of "The Heirloom Tomato" is an argument that somethingterrible has been lost as the U.S. and other nations have moved tomass production of hybrid crops bred for uniformity, resistance todisease, and the ability to withstand mechanical harvesting andtranscontinental shipping. Just as wildlife organizations raise alarms about the loomingextinction of animal species like the panda and polar bear, Goldmanand other advocates of small-scale farming worry about theextinction of heirloom crops. It's not just the drying up of the botanical gene pool thatconcerns them. They also argue that each of us pays a price when we go to thesupermarket or a restaurant and encounter the pale, dry, mealytomato impostor that has been bred for just about everymanufacturing consideration - except taste. Part Two of the book is a guide to the actual growing of heirloomtomatoes, the result of five years of Goldman's laboriousexperiments with more than 1,000 varieties of tomato plants on herestate in New York's Hudson Valley. She describes each of the 200 specimens pictured in the book (withlush photographs supplied by Victor Schrager) by size, weight,shape, color, sweetness, flavor, texture, leaf type and recommendedusage - is it best for salad, spaghetti sauce or a Bloody Mary? Each variety has been exhaustively researched, yielding wonderfulanecdotes about such people as folksy farmer and tomato seeddeveloper Benjamin Franklin Quisenberry, namesake of the Big Benbeefsteak tomato. "Slices of Big Ben do wonderful things for anice, fat, juicy hamburger," Goldman remarks in the "best use"category. After introducing us to her garden bounty - the oxheart-shapedDinner Plate is "soft, melting and juicy" while Aunt Ginny's Purpleis a "big, beautiful pink mama" that "cuts and tastes like filetmignon" - it's time for the recipes. The selections range from soups, pastas and pizza to salads, salsasand chutneys. There's even an unusual dessert tart that pairs whitepeaches with tomatoes. And don't miss the drop-dead gorgeous photoof tomato chips - green, gold, crimson and orange slices of themeaty fruit, brushed with garlic oil and baked at 250 F until theyare dehydrated and crisp. Though many of the recipes call for specific varieties, Goldmansays any tomato will work. One of the joys of perusing this volume is seeing the breathtakingvariety and downright weirdness of nature. The Speckled Roman tomato, for instance, looks like a littlerocket, except it's cherry red with carrot stripes. The OrangeStrawberry resembles - you guessed it - a strawberry, or, asGoldman puts it, "a dancer en pointe." Then there's the blood-red variety known as Goldman's ItalianAmerican, shaped like a fig - but much fatter at the bottom - andweighing up to a pound. Goldman obtained the seeds from a tomatoplant growing by the side of a road in Italy and named it for herfather's grocery in Brooklyn. For Goldman, there is a story in every variety, spotlighting theefforts of farmers over thousands of years to grow varietiesuniquely suited to local soil conditions and climate. And even though heirloom tomatoes can be pricier than supermarketproduce and are currently the rage among foodies and trendy chefs,she firmly rejects the idea that there is anything elitist orfaddish about them. As chairwoman of the Iowa-based Seed Savers Exchange, anorganization dedicated to ensuring the survival of heirloom seeds,Goldman believes that the future of the planet's biodiversity mayrest in the calloused, dirt-under-the-fingernails hands of ordinaryAmericans with a patch of dirt to putter in.