True love and homegrown tomatoes

I have been swimming most days since October last year and I cannot believe how warm the water has been. It was still beautiful last week. We did have some desperately needed rain, but the temperature is very mild and the water just sublime. Although the weather has been perfect for swimming and beach pursuits, it has not been conducive for the vegetable garden, which has been a struggle all summer. That said our tomato plants keep bearing fruit. I think surely this is the end of the season, but those delicious globes of red flavour endure appearing. For as long as they last, we will enjoy the harvest. Homegrown tomatoes cannot be beaten. This seems to be a universal truth. As John Denver (and Guy Clark) sang about in the eighties:

When I die don’t bury meIn a box in a cold dark cemeteryOut in the garden would be much better‘Cause I could be pushin’ up a home grown tomatoesHome grown tomatoes, home grown tomatoesWhat’d life be without home grown tomatoes?Only two things that money can’t buyThat’s true love and home grown tomatoesLong before this USA yodeling, most Italian families have, for generations, been making passata in an annual ritual.

I recently saw an interview with Tino Carnevale, from Gardening Australia. It was all about his family in Tasmania and what they refer to as “Tomato Day”. All members of the extended family gather and are expected to contribute labour on the day to provide sauce for the rest of the year, and each family has its own special recipe.  Tomato Day is not held on a set date, but on a day when the most tomatoes are ripe and which the family decides to all get together to make the sauce.What I really enjoyed was how wholeheartedly they had adopted the practice. For Tino’s mother, Pat could not have been more Australian. She was born in a small Tasmanian family as an only child. She has a very broad Aussie accent and just so happened to marry Robert; an Italian from another world fifty years ago. Their children, grandchildren and extended family now revel in their long established tradition of Tomato Day. It was a beautiful story of a simple act of “true love and home grown tomatoes”.Pat was meticulous with the process.

As he said, “It’s very important that most of our foods are our own fresh produce. We feed a lot of people over the year and a lot of people come in and drop in. Most Italian homes are open doors.” The sauce is used mainly for making sugo and passata for pasta and as a spread for pizzas. It’s a great way of enjoying your annual crop all year round. I know many families, Italian or not have annual food rituals that are increasingly popular. Old things that are new again! Following is Matthew Evans thoughts on making passata. “Simply wash good tomatoes and plunge them in hot water to loosen the skin. I like to mash them up with my hands a little, keeping the free-flow juice in one pot, and putting the flesh through a food mill.  This separates the skin and seeds from the pulp, unlike a food processor, which mangles them all up and delivers a coarser flavoured sauce.  The thin liquid I use for soup, the thick liquid I store as my passata.“The passata is bottled, capped, and placed in a large pot (lined with tea towels to prevent the jars cracking as they jostle). The pot is filled with water and boiled for a couple of hours to sterilise and preserve the passata. Take care when removing the jars (or leave them to cool in the water), and store in a cool, dark place.”