It’s the full swing of summer here in Tuscany and it’s hot hot hot; which means the tomatoes are beautiful, plump, dark red and full of flavor. While many Tuscans prefer their tomatoes green and crunchy, I like mine red and ripe, sliced and sprinkled with salt and olive oil, a little basil with some good bread to sop up the juices.
The tomato is a member of the nightshade family, which also includes peppers, eggplants and potatoes, as well as tobacco, belladonna and mandrake. Interesting mix of alkaloids, some of which are deadly!
Originating in Central and South America, where it is a perennial, the Spanish are credited with distributing it around the world, to Asia through the Philippines and to Europe through Spain as well as southern Italy. The tomato is so closely linked with “Italian food” that most people are surprised to hear that it has only been used in Naples and the south since the late-17th Century and in Rome, Tuscany and northern Italy since the late 18th or early 19th Century; and the reason for its introduction at all was Spain.
Southern Italy was a part of the Spanish Empire for almost 300 years, having won it in a war, and from the early 1500’s until the early 1800’s the Bourbon kings of Spain ruled Naples and Sicily. Having discovered the new world and the tomato with it, the Spanish were the natural carriers of this foreign vegetable to Europe. It took foothold in southern Italy, where it grew well in the hot summer sun and the rest, as they say, is history. Sabatino Abagnale, a tomato producer in Campania, tells me that the tomato was first mentioned in a cookbook of Spanish-influenced recipes printed in Naples in 1692 and since that time has heavily influenced the cuisine of that region to this day.
In the US, the heirloom tomatoes are o called because past generations grew these old varieties that then fell out of favor when everyone left their gardens and started shopping at the supermarkets. But in Italy the old varieties were never lost and, even though more people shop at a supermarket than tend a garden, the traditional varieties, all wrinkled and nubbled and thick-skinned, have continued their strong presence in both garden and kitchen.
There is one peculiar kind of tomato that is picked at the end of the summer and hung in bunches and left for use during the winter. They don’t dry out or get wrinkly because the skin is so tough and solid, and when you use them months later they are just as fresh as the day they were picked, only more velvety instead of juicy. They fascinate me!
Panzanella
One of my favorite Tuscan summertime dishes is panzanella, Tuscan bread salad. As anyone who’s ever visited Tuscany knows, the bread here is salt less and can be quite a disappointment at first. It’s a wonderful foil to their salty salami and stews but takes a little getting used to. The Tuscans are frugal people and the dish is born of la cucina povera, or the poor kitchen. Almost 500 years ago the governor of Tuscany put a heavy tax on salt and being both poor as well as austere, they started leaving salt out of the bread. Because of this the bread doesn’t absorb moisture from the air and, kept outside of plastic, won’t mold, meaning it can be kept for a good long time and used when needed. The Tuscans have developed an entire cuisine to make use of the old bread, of which panzanella is my hands down favorite! It’s simple: rehydrate old bread in a little salted water, squeeze it dry and crumble it into a bowl. Add what is fresh out of the garden: beautiful ripe tomatoes, a little salad onion, maybe a cucumber, definitely some torn basil and a generous slug of good extra virgin olive oil. Toss it well and enjoy it with a crisp glass of Vernaccia di San Gimignano!
Next time: Summer Tomatoes Part Two: canning San Marzano’s
