Abundance of Garden Tomatoes
Another memory I have is of growing tomatoes — a wide variety, and always far too many.
They ended up everywhere: in salads, curries, pasta, pizza, sauces. And when the bowls kept filling, we’d blitz and freeze them in containers and moulds until the freezer was so crammed there was no space left.
Tomatoes are another one of summer’s constants. They glow in every shade — orange, yellow, red — sometimes half green, half ripened, caught mid-change.
Each type brings its own flavour: cherry and baby plums with their burst of sweet-tangy juice, the sturdy salad ones, the rich heft of beef tomatoes. They’re technically a fruit, but in my kitchen they’ll always be a vegetable — they belong in savoury dishes.
I use them daily, often without thinking. A base for sauces and curries, chopped into salads, scattered across bruschetta, baked into pasta.
And always, freezing batch after batch until there’s no space left at all.
Try my recipe:
There’s something about picking them straight off the vine and eating them there — the skin splitting, juice spilling sweet and sharp all at once. Then looking around at how many were left and joking (while slightly complaining) that there were simply too many.
Store-bought ones work well off season. Tomatoes are part of the nightshade family, and they sit quietly at the base of more dishes than I can count.
My food. My canvas. My chronicles.
— Mina
Garden tomatoes · seasonal summer vegetables · tomatoes in recipes · nostalgic ingredient post · summer side dish ideas
