August is peak season for celebrating ripe tomatoes here in the Pacific Northwest. After a stupid cold spring, we’ve had a warm summer with above average temperatures. A bumper crop looks promising. We gardeners in this far northwest corner of the map don’t take these years for granted. After months of tending and tying stems to their support, fingers sticky and stained olive from handling the fragrant foliage, it’s time to reap and share the bounty. Who knows when we’ll have another banner tomato summer.
Love Apples
This recipe means the world to me and very likely is special to cooks and their loved ones the world over. The original is from the inimitable Marcella Hazan and is readily found all over the internet.
This is how I serve up “love on a plate.” I hope you’ll join me, all you need is an open heart, tomatoes, butter, and a single onion.
It was the summer of 2009 we were getting ready to take our son off to college. I remember it was a glorious growing season because even though I should have been packing I was busy picking and preserving a bumper crop of tomatoes from my tiny back garden.
Truth be told, whenever I’m slightly overwhelmed I take to the garden to “busy” myself, a practice that dates to when my son was a baby and I was more than a little bit overcome by parenting. Life improved when I convinced my neighborhood nursery to hire me to water plants which in turn launched my career in horticulture, but that’s a story for another day.
Fast forward roughly 18 years and that baby was leaving home. The car was full, as was this mother’s heart. Friends who were out of town let us stay in their house before the university’s official move-in day. An unfamiliar home is always still, but we were especially quiet as we looked ahead. Parents often center themselves when a child is in transition, I don’t want to do that. Our son was the one who was making a big leap, all my husband and I had to do was learn how to let go. It was very, very quiet in that beautiful home on a hillside overlooking Boise, my son’s new home.
RIPE!
To the Garden
I did what I always do, I went to the garden which is where I noticed several perfectly ripe tomatoes on the vine. Did you know that tomatoes are sometimes referred to as love apples? I knew what we were having for dinner. I picked some tomatoes and went inside to find butter, an onion, and some dried pasta, pantry staples in most kitchens.
While the better part of a stick of butter was gently melting in a saucepan over medium heat, I cut an onion in half. Yes, there were tears, but surely it was the onion. I sliced those hefty tomatoes and added them to the saucepan with the butter and a tiny splash of water. How many tomatoes? There’s no right number, go with what your heart feels is enough. Take care to not brown the butter, we’re feeling fragile, okay?
Cook the tomatoes, mashing them with a wooden spoon, until you get a coarse sauce. The smoother your sauce, the more it will cling to your chosen pasta, but no biggie. Place both halves of the onion cut side down into your tomatoes-turned-sauce. Reduce heat to a bare simmer — I know, one person’s simmer is another’s burble. The temperature markings on the knobs of my home stove have long worn off, so I just watch to make sure the bubbles are small and not angry.
I love my stove, a tiny Wolf model we purchased when my son was a baby, but admittedly it’s on its last legs. I’m always (pleasantly) surprised when I cook in another kitchen on a cooktop marked with temperature readings and burners that you don’t have to prime with a lighter like you’re camping.
Like a school picture stuck to the refrigerator that captures an age, we Pacific Northwest gardeners document a successful tomato season.
Where were we? Place a lid on your lovely sauce and simmer on low for an hour or so until the sauce thickens, and the onion dissolves into individual petals. At some point you’re going to want to boil water for the pasta, but your work is essentially done. That is, except for the letting go part.
Time travel to today. For the last 15 years life has been tumultuous, as I’m sure it has for many. Hearts have been broken, healed, and filled to the brim many times over. The rest of it, sometimes so very messy, falls into place one way or the other. At the end of last year, our son asked his love to marry him. She said yes and now wears our family ring. I know this isn’t the end of life’s wild ride for them or us or anyone, but I know having love in our hearts is what makes it all worth living. Tomatoes in the garden helps, too.
The End
This may be the largest (single!) cherry tomato plant that I’ve ever grown — Sungold of course.
A sweet story. Thank you! Here in the Midwest we are having a bumper crop of ‘maters too. And the plants that were labeled cherry red and supposed to be an inch in diameter are either Black Crim or Cherokee Purple and absolutely huge and delicious. Bought the plants at an
Amish family nursery and I suspect
some little fingers moved some labels. I’m saving seeds for next year.
Ah yes, raising tomato starts is harder than it looks. Back when I had a nursery I started several flats of mixed varieties. Too bad I dropped one of then when I was transporting them. Needless to say, those were “my” picks that year.
It is State Law in 28 states, that if grow tomatoes, you have to grow Sungolds.
And rightly so!
Grew tomatoes for the first time this year. We have occasional nibbles of tomatoes slightly bigger than peas……
But love your post!
thanks Anne. Growing tomatoes isn’t always sensible. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend the book The 64-dollar Tomato by William Alexander.
My hubby is the Tomato King of Pittston (I designated that : ) ) This year though, he cut back on the number of plants he put in, the weather didn’t seem to cooperate as much and the septoria keeps yellowing leaves as fast as new ones grow. Still. We will put up about 20 gallon size bags in the freezer to be cooked down in the fall and winter when the woodstove is going. The house will smell like an Italian restaurant and we will be happy.
It’s amazing how something so simple on the surface can be so complex when one starts examining more closely. Each variety has its own flavors, colors, size – so much for each sense to enjoy. And join those flavors with our garlic, peppers, onions, oregano, basil and olive oil (NOT grown by us) and one could be transported to culinary heaven. For us, growing tomatoes IS sensible and practically necessary. I love how you tied in all those tendrils of the story, just like tying up the stems. Beautiful. AND your artwork is always a joy to see. Thanks.
I don’t know what i’d do with my summer if I didn’t grow tomatoes. Seattle has taken a sudden turn to chill, damp and rainy! So now I’m worried about blight in addition to ripening. You’re so right, those smells and flavors make me happy too.
Lorene, I was thinking about writing a story called: “My beefsteak tomato ship sailed and sank” until I read your sweet story. I’ve got a few tomato plants but they are not state-fair pretty. Sun scald. They’ll suffice. I can’t imagine summers without tomato sandwiches slathered in mayonnaise. I could buy them at the farmer’s market, but reimagining them now as love apples makes them seem all the more essential and worth the trouble. Thank you.
Ah, there was a time when I aspired to ‘Mortgage Lifter’, ‘Brandywine’ and other beefstakes — but the I came to my senses and decided I’d rather have ripe tomatoes. This week our weather has turned cool and rainy. No I’m rooting for my cherry tomatoes, let alone the palm-sized fruits to ripen. Love apple = labor of love.
PNW, Willamette Valley. Bumper year indeed! Our tomatoes are huge and the Sungolds are more than prolific. We are currently in what folks call, “The False Fall”. But, more heat is coming and the vines are loaded and waiting! We’ve eaten lots of toasted tomato sandwiches. The grandchildren eat the Sungolds as soon as they turn orange. So wonderful!
False fall indeed! It’s pouring over here on the west (wet) side and cold enough for a sweater. More heat please!!!! Thanks for the encouragement Cathleen.
Thanks Lorene, as a first time tomato grower this year, I really enjoyed your beautifully written post.
We’ve had a poor summer here in the south of the UK and finally our “toms” are ripening. It’s exciting to see the lovely green clusters turning red. I planted a couple of marigolds with them in the raised frame in the hope they would be pest free and it worked!. Will try your recipe, it sounds lovely.
Hi Joanne, It’s entirely possible that we gardeners plant and grow to recapture the wonder that we feel when our efforts are met with a bountiful (or not) harvest! xo