Tomatillo, Tomatillo, tomatillo - tillo - tillo - tillo

It looks like a green tomato in its own private little paper bag. The Nahuatl people of pre-conquest Mexico called it the tomatl, which means "fat water". They called the tomato, an introduction from the Andes further south, a xitomatl, meaning "fat water with a navel". The conquistadors loved tomatillos, and took back seeds to Spain - xitomatl seeds, which they called tomates. From that point confusion reigned; everyone calls tomatoes by the word for tomatillos except the people of central Mexico, who know what their vegetables are called, thank you very much.

Tomatillos almost ready to pick

We have grown tomatillos Physalis philadelphica with great success for many years, starting in our allotment in Leeds, where it thrived outdoors. They are a member of the Solanaceae, which includes tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, potatoes and deadly nightshade. They are much hardier than tomatoes, and don't get blight. The little paper bag is familiar to anyone who goes to the Savoie Villars Hotel in Le Grand Pressigny for a meal, where cape gooseberries, those marble-sized orange fruit surrounded by a papery net, garnish every dish.

The plants grow to about a metre in height, and get so top heavy with fruit they fall over

Tomatillos are not self-fertile, so it takes two plants to tango. The bees think they are wonderful and the plants are always busy with insects. Despite what some seed merchants still say, growing them in a greenhouse just doesn't work - they turn into enormous leggy sprawling plants with pathetic little infertile fruits. The fruits are ripe three weeks after fertilisation, and you must harvest each and every one, or they will self seed and you'll never get rid of them.

Tomatillos have yellow flowers

The variety we grow, Purple de Milpa, develops purple patches when about to ripen, and is slightly sweeter than the green / yellow kind. Picked while still green, it has a lemony flavour which is lost when it ripens. When fully ripe the flesh turns yellow, Along with the purple patches, it looks like a bruise. I have been using the same packet (from Suttons) for about 10 years; I meant what I said about picking up all the fruit.

This one is just about right

They are a staple of Mexican food, both raw and cooked, in sauces, for fajitas, for example, and in jam (they are high in pectin, unlike tomatoes, and make a good jam, hence the alternative name Jamberry). To be honest, I don't like them, but the chilli content in most recipes blows out completely any flavour that might be imparted by the tomatillo.

Fresh tomatillo salsa, however, is different. It tastes very fresh, and is good with salad, as a dip, or in any of the Mexican folding breads like tacos or enchiladas, or as a zinger for soup.  It's best with all fresh ingredients, if you can get them. DON'T USE TINNED TOMATILLOS.

Here is Tim's recipe for Tomatillo Salsa Fresca.

A good double handful of fresh tomatillos, firm and under-ripe, about 8 or 10
 ½ - 2 green chillis (fresh, frozen or pickled cayenne, serrano, jalapeno or what you will)
1 red pepper (fresh or preserved)
1 medium onion
1 small bunch fresh coriander
Salt and pepper to taste

Remove the tomatillos from their paper bags,and wash them to remove the sticky coating on the fruit.This is normal but fails to warm me to them.

Remove the seeds and stems from the chillis. If you're a beginner and nervous about chillis, start by putting a half chilli in.You can always add more. But you can't take it out!

De-seed the pepper. If you feel like peeling it, well, I can't stop you.

Cut all the main ingredients into chunks, and put them in the goblet of a blender or food processor. Whizz until finely chopped, but stop before the mixture turns into a purée. Taste and add salt and pepper. If there isn't enough chilli, chop some more finely and stir it in. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.

{Tim here... "Just a couple of points... blitz the tomatilloes coarsely... the onion and chilli finely... otherwise you will end up with too much juice!!

I have started to do each ingredient on its own and combine them in a bowl...
then finely dice the red pepper [I am now using the bottled red peppers from Lidl... less faff, taste good] and fold it in.

Add the finely chopped, fresh coriander shortly before serving... enjoy!

Any liquid left in the bowl after the meal, just needs the addition of some oil of your choice and a bit of mustard to become a zingy salad dressing!}

Confessions of a bean addict

It all started in 2005. James, a 2CV friend, sent us a package of "heritage" seeds (semences paysannes). It included "Climbing bean, Italian, thought to be Perfection B". Just a few beans, nothing serious. I thought I could give them up any time I like, and, well, it was harmless.

Then I started to meet other bean users (you know who you are, Stephen C-), Bean pushers, if you know what I mean. Passing each other little Ziploc™ bags containing a few seeds. Wow, man, the colours! and the psychedelic patterns, fascinating names, sometimes tragic history. Kew Blue, Bulgarian Purple, Yin yang. Lingua di Fuoco (Firetongue), Ireland Creek Annie, Hutterite Soup, Nombril de Bonne Soeur. The Cherokee Trail of Tears.

A dish of multicoloured dried beans found its way onto the kitchen table. I found a friend absently running her fingers through the beans, appreciating their silky texture and subtle colours.

Country Bean Mix

That's when I realised something had to be done.

I had to get more.

And France is an excellent place to find French beans (one  of many different types of cultivated bean belonging to the species phaseolus vulgaris). We particularly like haricots à écosser (beans for podding), which are available in the form of seeds for sowing, semi-dry ripe beans in their pods, dry beans in sacks for cooking, and canned haricots in brine. Soissons, Mogette (though this is only worthy of the name when grown in the Vendée), Triomphe de Farcy... You can buy ripe Coco beans in their pods at a vegetable stall in your local market from August onwards and save some of the seeds. For diversity, you can go to not-for-profit organisations like Kokopelli in France or the Garden Organic Heritage Seed Library in Britain. The US, of course, is an excellent source of traditional varieties.

There are two forms of French bean: haricot à rames (climbing) and haricot nain (dwarf). This year we have two bean frames and we are growing more climbing beans. The British traditional style of frame is a bunch of canes stuck in the ground in a circle that cross at the top. Tim made one of these out of extremely rustic poles (elder branches) for  this year's planting. Our older frame has the canes crossing at the bottom, a style we first saw in Majorca used for tomatoes.

Bulgarian Purple Bean, on a traditional frame. It has purple beans. But scarlet flowers!

Worth growing for the flowers alone.

Cherokee Trail of Tears, like many beans grown for drying, has edible pods. Modern varieties are selected to remain tender for a long time; the traditional varieties just go stringy. At least CToT tells you when it's too late - you can eat the pods as long as they are green. As soon as red or purple streaks appear - the blood of the Cherokee - you may as well leave the pods to dry fully before harvesting them, because they are tough.

Cherokee Trail of Tears - just starting to flower

One from the HSL - Kew Blue - on the Majorcan frame. It's the pods that are blue, this time.

The big advantage of the Majorcan frame is that most of the beans hang outside it, making them easier to pick. It has a smaller footprint, so you can underplant it with another crop, or marigolds...

Being Brits, we love Runner Beans (Phaseolus coccineus) too. In France, haricot d'Espagne are grown principally as a decorative annual climbing plant with abundant handsome leaves and flowers, oh and by the way the pods are edible. Only Bakker, founded in Holland, proposes a haricot d'Espagne (Lady Di) as a vegetable. In the US, too, "Scarlet Runner" beans are mainly grown for decoration.

Here, runner beans tend not to set - produce pods - mainly because the climate is dry and hot in summer. Runners need a lot more moisture around the roots than French beans and are often planted over a trench filled during the winter months with bulky organic matter that will retain moisture (crumpled newspaper will do). Misting the whole plant with water morning and evening helps a set. Needless to say we haven't done any of that, and they are doing just fine.

Runner bean "Moonlight" on the Majorcan frame, doing particularly well this year

Runner beans are perennials, overwintering as a fleshy root like a parsnip. Three of last year's "Moonlight" plants did this. They got off to an early start, and have been producing for about three weeks. The young plants I raised from seed are just beginning to catch up.

Good enought to enter  the "Six runner beans" class - not good enough to win though

Runners are unable to self-pollinate unless an insect "trips" the flower by alighting on the keel, causing the stamens to come in contact with the pistil. French beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) are self-fertile, and don't need any help, so they set much more readily. That also means that French beans breed true, and you can save the seed from one year to the next and expect the same results. That is not the case in Runner Beans, since the pollinating insect is likely to bring in pollen from elsewhere.


Moonlight is a hybrid (oh horrors!), bred as a self-fertile runner bean: this was tried several times before and usually resulted in something that looked vaguely like a runner bean (often a subtly different colour) and tasted nothing like it, or possibly that should be "tasted like nothing". All praise to the developers of Moonlight: it works. "Firestorm" is a new red-flowered hybrid of the same type which we haven't tried - we'll stick with Moonlight, thanks.

We're producing....

Yesterday evening's haul....

Courgettes Iceball, Rond de Nice and Précoce Maraichère, squash Gold Nugget and yellow crookneck

And ready to harvest / just harvested ...

• Cucumbers La Diva and Marketmore
• Tomatoes Nectar, Sungold, Bleue Fruit
• Chard Fordhook Giant and Bright Lights
• Onions Stuttgart Giant, Sturon and Centurion (500 gm of sets of the latter yielded 16kg of onions)
• Shallots Jermor and Red Sun
• Runner beans Moonlight
• Lettuce Rosedale and the tail end of Gourmet Blend, new Gourmet blend just planted
• Cabbage Tête de Pierre
• Carrots Nantes 3 improved 
• Beetroot Cylindra
• Kale Red Russian (the furthest on among the kales)
• Chilli peppers Pili Pili and Cayenne (green as yet)
• Potatoes Red Duke of York and Charlotte, more to come
• Plum Reine Claude Dorée
• Mirabelle de Nancy / Myrobalan - 1 fruit

Meanwhile, in the orchard, the apple trees have lost most of their fruit to brown rot, possibly linked to hail damage. The pears were better protected due to their close habit of growth. The old Reinette Blanche should more than cover our apple requirements. The birds have had all my early redcurrants, but there's one ray of sunshine - they don't understand white currants. To a bird, a ripe fruit is red. Or yellow, in the case of our Reine Claudes. Or purple, like our quetsches. Not pearly white. So they left them alone. Result: 1.3kg of whitecurrants are ready for sorbet, icecream, cake decoration...

White currant, variety "Blanka"

Choice strigs of white currants. Have I got some matching ones to go in the show?

We used to enter white currants in the "any other fruit" category at the Burley Model Allotments show, held annually at the beginning of September. Here in France, the growing period is compressed and everything comes at once. Our single redcurrant bush of a late variety is covered by netting to keep out the little perishers. The 23 other redcurrant bushes may have 50g of currants hidden away beneath the leaves, but as far as I'm concerned they're for the birds.

The bad news is that three tomato plants appeared to have been affected by blight (already) and we have cut them down and binned them.

Even worse news is that my little Fuji Finepix camera has died (the captor, I think) and these photos are taken using my Iphone, so I've had to learn how to do that pdq. 

The critic, the chef and the fake tomatoes - Part 2

Chef Alain Passard of three-Michelin-starred restaurant L'Arpège in Paris revealed a story from the opposite end of the spectrum of humankind's relationship with the tomato. It was published in La Depeche of 11th July, At Passard's, haute cuisine takes root in the vegetable garden . This article also appeared in the NR on 11th July but has been removed from their archive, presumably for reasons of copyright.

Picture by Virginie Clecka

The headline picture is of a middle-aged man sniffing a tomato, variety Marmande de Brécenne. "This garden has saved my life. Without it, I probably would no longer cook." Alain Passard is celebrating the first tomato of the season ripening (in open ground, of course) in the market garden at Le Gros Chesnay, Sarthe, 20 minutes from Le Mans. This four-hectare potager, with two others in Eure and la Manche, keeps his restaurant supplied 24/7, 365 days a year, with all its fruit, vegetables and herbs, except citrus. That's about a tonne and a half of produce a month, and about four tonnes of tomatoes which never see the inside of a chiller, between now and the end of October. And nary a hydroponic, neither!

Head gardener Sylvain Picard is cultivating 3,200 tomato plants of 78 varieties, which puts our 70 plants of 18 varieties well in the shade. I need them all, the chef says, pointing out the acidity or astringency of a fruit, the colour and consistency of the flesh of another. Not all the varieties are recorded in the seed merchants' official register of about 100 of the estimated 12 to 14 thousand known varieties in the world. Nor, I surmise, is any of them a fake.

Seasonality is the only fixture in his menus. The pressure of that degree of uncertainty over what may be available and good enough for L'Arpège forces the restaurant and its customers to respect the times and seasons of nature. Sylvain Picard is constantly searching for new varieties, and sometimes finds things he thinks are really good but the chef will have nothing to do with them. Chefs, eh? The potager is 100% organic, but Sylvain Picard has not sought official accreditation, for reasons of cost. "I'm not saying we have the best produce in the world, but the curiosity value and the diversity that makes the difference" he says.

The chef has removed his white gloves and taken out his knife to shape the Marmande into a cobweb-thin carpaccio. Then, waving a slice of tomato so thin it's transparent, he exclaims "how beautiful it is!" Scarcely a dribble of olive oil, a smidgen of salt - stay simple. "Before having a garden", Alain Passard confides, "I had lost all idea of seasonality. Today I love this encounter, you wait for things. In summer, when it's good weather, you are in clover and you eat tomatoes. In winter, when it's cold, you are in the cellar and you eat roots", he summarises. Simple.

But why not go to the Arpège, try its Dégustation Legumière? HOW MUCH????

There is evidence that the tide is beginning to turn in favour of the Real Tomato. In Super U this week, Tim observed a shopper at the fresh produce shelf which bore a display of purse-shaped ribbed tomatoes of the sort we have to come to call "Liguria" for want of a better code name, and a pile of brown-and-green, lumpy, mishapen tomatoes labelled "Noire de Crimée" which for once appeared to be accurate. She picked up a Liguria, examined it, sniffed it and put it down. She did the same with a Noire de Crimée - and began loading them into her basket.  Lidl is now labeling Liguria as tomates côtelées - ribbed tomatoes - where perhaps it might have used another name. And these are just fine for filling with a tasty stuffing and baking.

Hoorah for diversity, but not at any price.

Anyone out there seen the film  Ratatouille? Could the plot line be as twisted?

The critic, the chef and the fake tomatoes - Part 1

Part 1: the critic

We first became hooked on tomato growing when we discovered that tomatoes that tasted of something still existed. We joined the West Yorkshire Organic Group and went to their annual show, where we met Terry Marshall. This quiet man is a world acknowledged expert on tomato growing. He operates from a couple of allotments in Bingley, West Yorkshire. Every year at the WYOG show he organises a selection of varieties for a taste test. Terry introduced us to varieties we have grown ever since, including Sungold (yellow cherry), Vanessa (looks like a supermarket tomato, tastes excellent) and... a huge lumpy tomato variously called Oxheart in English, Cuor di Bue (Italian), or Coeur de Boeuf (French). That's not the "hearts and flowers" heart shape, but more like an animal heart.

A selection of our produce, September 2012.

Tim's photo includes tomato varieties clockwise from top left: Oxheart, (a melon, three Rond de Nice courgettes), Carorich F1, Green Zebra, Sungold F1 and Nectar F1 cherry, Ananas, Lemon Boy F1 and finally Vanessa F1.

The typical Oxheart shape, blotches, cracked skin and all. The flesh is pink, not red.

This year we are growing twenty varieties, five of which are F1 hybrids, and seventy plants in all. Of these, we raised 17 varieties from seed, bought one plant (Lemon Boy, because we had no seed) at a Bricomarché which we turned into seven plants via cuttings, and gained two more (Russe and Yellow Pear) at a plant swap. Oxheart/Cuor di Bue/Coeur de Boeuf is still with us, though I had to replace the ageing packet from Seeds of Italy with fresh seed from Graines Baumaux.
Baumaux presently has 254 tomato offerings on its web site, including numerous "collection" types.

If you go to a local vide grenier much after mid July, you will encounter stalls with baskets of tomatoes for sale. Often these have the characteristic appearance of Oxheart. Many people save the seed year after year, selecting their best specimens, and subtle variations and cross-fertilisations develop which differentiate the original stock into, effectively, new varieties, unregistered and undocumented. Sometimes a seed supplier may collect one of these country varieties, clean it up of viruses, name it (e.g. "Cyril's Choice") and begin to sell it. The seed libraries such as Garden Organic are responsible for reintroduction of many old varieties.

Over the last couple of years we have seen displays of tomatoes labelled Coeur de Boeuf in the supermarkets, retailing at two or three times the price of their ordinary tomatoes. These look more like coin purses than hearts, and are ribbed around the shoulder, like an Italian variety called Liguria. Maybe we should have noticed their rather suspicious uniformity.

Not as pricey as they were, for some reason. And the flesh is red, not pink.

Lately they were joined by airbrushed Ananas (Pineapple), Noire de Crimée (Black Krim) and Green Zebra, all varieties that we have grown for some years. We bought some, but were disappointed by the flavour. The reason? They aren't what we think they are. They have been developed by commercial seed merchants, part of the enormous agribusiness complexes such as Syngenta and Monsanto, for productivity, uniformity, consistency of supply and suitability for mass (hydroponic) growing. They were denounced by gastronomic critic Périco Légasse who made the front page of La Nouvelle Republique on 10th July 2014 with his views (and those of his interviewer, Cristophe Colinet).

Périco Légasse, from his blog

What follows is my translation of the article, Tomates : Périco Légasse met les pieds dans le plat. All the views expressed in the article are those of the interviewer and interviewee, and are not necessarily those of the author of this post. If I have mistranslated or misrepresented anything, it's my fault. Unfortunately the pun in the title is lost in translation.

Périco Légasse sticks his oar in

For Périco Légasse, it is urgent that consumers regain their respect for the seasonality of produce.

Scandal in the juicy tomato market:  fake old varieties are flourishing out of season with a marketing and agrochemical sauce.

In the weekly Marianne of 19th October 2013, the gastronomy critic Périco Légasse (who also officiates on TV Tours) denounced some trickery: "Very fashionable, but the beautiful striped and ridged tomato that is on sale under the name of coeur de boeuf simply isn't one."

He was right. Worse, the phenomenon has grown to the point that today, 90% of this variety found commercially are counterfeit. The directorate general for competition, consumption and suppression of frauds* tracks this upsurge in counterfeit tomatoes with difficulty.

• Christophe Collinet: Since you alerted the public to the confidence trick of the fake Oxheart, one can't say how this might be arranged....

Périco Légasse: No. This fashion for named tomato varieties with new shapes and colours was set up to alter the image of tomatoes on a grand scale, hydroponic or under plastic, without soul and without a history, which have occupied the entirety of the shelves of the large retailers for years. At the same time, we have been present at a legitimate return to the tomato which has flavour, the one from our childhood and from the potagers. When you are fortunate enough to be able to compare the real thing with a fake, you wonder how some people dare to call these watery, cotton woolly vegetables tomatoes.

• Under a ton of vinaigrette?

Yes, that's it : the vendors of vinegar and artificial seasonings have done a good job: for something that has no flavour, they invent absolutely spectacular sauces to correct the tastelessness of the produce.

• The real tomato is a luxury, then?

It's terrible, but yes : you get what you pay for. What is good in all cases, is the bunch or cherry. For its size, it's sweet and juicy. If one goes for the more traditional, older varieties, yes, they're a luxury item. I see tomatoes in certain rather well off parts of Paris at 14 or 15 € a kilo! I'm thinking of Zebra, Ananas, Noire de Crimée and that notorious Oxheart, which is an absolutely sublime cottage garden tomato when it's from open ground and respectful of the method of production and the season, unlike its counterfeits. It's a catastrophe for those who have never been able to taste the real thing, and therefore believe that that's all there is to a tomato.

• Who's to blame: seedsmen, producers, public pressure, consumers?

It's all a system which has got the masses used to an amnesia of the original taste of produce, but I insist on the responsibility of consumers who want tomatoes all year and not too expensive, which maintains agro-industry.

• Mankind forgets nature and consumers forget seasonality?

Obviously! Asparagus, it's from April to June and when there is no more, it's not worth the trouble to ask for it! The seasonality of fruits and vegetables must be reintroduced and the tomato is the perfect symbol of this : it's the most sensitive fruit to its season. Seasonality is the basic rule of durable consumption with a human face : respect for the weather, for the environment, for the terroir, for transport. The system of a society of overconsumption must be forgotten, if not, the planet will finally explode.

To go further: Commentary by Christophe Colinet

"The sorcerers' apprentices of the market garden"

The fraud is not limited to Oxheart tomatoes. Other counterfeits are arriving which imitate the varieties Ananas, Noire de Crimée, Green Zebra.... You can't talk of genetically modified organisms in the strict sense. These fake "old fashioned tomatoes" are hybrids, crossings of tomatoes of old varieties with other highly productive varieties (the ovule of a plant is fertilised by the pollen of another while in an OGM, one or several genes of one species are introduced into another, without going through cross-fertilisation).

They are cultivated by the producers thanks to the manipulations of the seedsmen like Saveol, De Ruyter or Syngenta. The researchers of this agrochemical giant, in their Seeds Syngenta centre in the Vaucluse, also develop peppers resistant to disease or tomatoes which do not go off. The genetic crosses which allow development of new "better performing" varieties. These hybrid varieties have a yield five or six times greater per hectare.

Less taste and more toxic

Clearly (it's the Monsanto recipe) you can forget the idea of keeping the seeds from your fruit to sow the next year -  these seeds only give one prolific generation. And, to crown the good news, stuffed with water and pesticides, the fruit and vegetables produced from hybrid seeds have less taste and are more toxic. Enjoy your meal.

Points

• For about fifteen years, the tomato, second most consumed product on the fresh vegetable shelves behind the potato, has been at the heart of a bloody commercial battle accompanied by numerous marketing strategies as much underhand as aggressive.
• Today in France each inhabitant consumes more than 14 kg of tomatoes per year 
• The tomato market is worth almost 1.3 billion euros and the major retailers obtain between 6% and 10 % of their sales of fresh vegetables from tomatoes.
• The directorate general for competition, consumption and suppression of frauds* has established fines for seeds, producers and vendors of fake Oxheart tomatoes.

*La direction générale de la concurrence, de consommation et de la répression des fraudes

That is the end of the NR article and of Part 1 of this entry. I would like to say that our F1 hybrid tomatoes are no more stuffed with water and pesticides than the open-pollinated hybrids that make up the rest of our collection. I just thought I'd end with this statement, taken directly from the Syngenta Vegetables web site, which sums up rather well the forces creating the situation in which the French market in luxury tomatoes finds itself.

"Global production of vegetables is valued at $500 billion and continues to grow, driven by consumer demand for fresh produce. Technology is playing an increasing role in meeting multiple requirements that go beyond consumer priorities of taste and convenience. Vegetable growers focus on yield, cost and resistance to disease, while retailers demand attractive appearance, consistency of supply and long shelf life."

There's nothing like the real thing - Oxheart in potentio