Today. Government Center Farmers’ Market. I bought all of them, five glorious pounds of red ripe tomatoes for five dollars, and had to call Kristi for a ride home from the Central Square T station because I was so weighed down and my bag was ripping.
No farm is going to go out of its way advertising their seconds (aka sauce) tomatoes. They won’t be tarted up like the heirlooms or spread across the whole table like the uniform field tomatoes. There might not even be that many to begin with. But rest assured, in this epoch of $4/lb tomatoes, they are well worth looking for. From now until late September, when tomatoes are coming in fast and furious, farmers will be playing fast and loose with these ever-so-slightly damaged-but-otherwise-still-perfectly-delicious babies.
In truth, these weren’t our first cheap seconds tomatoes. Last week, we were riding bikes in Hadley and happened on a little cart of vegetables outside a house. Tomatoes: a quarter each. A quarter each! We bought all of those. Kristi made them into sauce, simmered gently and loaded with garlic and basil, light and sweet and clean. Kristi is not off the boat Italian, but close, and she brings a fantastic, genetic paesan’s touch to our humble gravy.
The Government Center tomatoes became a pretty spicy salsa today. Please hear me out. My ethnic heritage has no salsa in it whatsoever (boiled cabbage, though, and lots of it), but I make a good salsa. It’s sort of adapted from The Joy.
First, I also bought poblano and some other miscellaneous spicy peppers. We had some red onion, garlic and cilantro procured at the Central Square market today as well — and a lime.
I cut the tomatoes into halves and quarters, tossed them in olive oil, salt and pepper, and threw them in a 400 degree oven until they were lightly roasted, soft and fragrant.
Meanwhile, I put the whole peppers on the open flame on my stovetop, blistering their skins and giving them a kind of roasty, smoky flavor. You need to let them cool and peel them before you use them.
Once you’ve organized the tomatoes and peppers, throw them in a bowl with chopped onions (red or white) a ton of garlic, some raw jalapenos or some such, olive oil, the fresh lime juice, salt, pepper and big, wild fistfuls of cilantro, stems and all. We have one of those stick things that purees soup. We call it the Zhusch, but we still haven’t figured out how to spell it. Use that or a food processor.
It’s pretty delicious, but we’re freezing it to help us later, in February, when the dark lords of limp, lifeless imported South American produce rule the misty, overlit produce sections.
Tags: Farmers markets
I feel your tomatoe joy, on Sunday I saw “canning tomatoes” out front of Mann’s Orchards farm store in Methuen. There were 25 pound boxes for $12, can you believe it? I bought 3 boxes and will up to my elbows in tomatoes this week as I freeze them all
can’t wait!