Friday 18 September 2009

Tomatoes


R bought me the greenhouse for my 40th birthday.

The fact that I was actually 43 when it arrived didn't take the edge off my excitement one little bit.

Life at the top of our hill is windy. Very windy indeed. I had wavered for a couple of years between a polytunnel (bigger, but less robust) and a greenhouse (not so much growing space, but less chance of being uprooted and ending up in the next county).

After one very windswept Winter, during which the barn roof nearly blew off, we decided that the sensible option would be the greenhouse.

Never knowingly under-engineered, R dug the foundations and put in enough reinforcing bars for a small tower block before pouring the concrete. Believe me, that greenhouse is going nowhere!

From the moment it went up, it has been my place.

I love to stand out there on an early Spring afternoon, pricking out seedlings and listening to the Sunday play on the radio.
It was my bolthole in the days after R died. I would hide in there with Moose when the noise from all the people in the house became too much for me.
Its warmth makes it a safe cocoon from the world. I am happy in there.


And most of all I love to grow tomatoes.

Tomatoes have never grown well outdoors here. If the blight didn't get them, the cold or my chickens would. But in the safety of the greenhouse they grow beautifully.

When R was alive, I mostly grew the cherry varieties as they were the ones he loved. Once the plants started to produce, I would put a large bowlful of tomatoes on the kitchen table every day and he would eat them like sweets, picking up two or three whenever he went past.

I am a sad creature of habit, so was unable to prevent myself from planting the same number of cherry varieties as usual this year (the sweet-as-sugar Sungold and the much more tomatoey old favourite, Gardener's Delight). I can happily eat a small mountain of tomatoes every day myself, but even so I am still not making a dent in the daily output. So pasta sauce-making is underway already, even before this year's paste variety (San Marzano) comes onstream (apart from the one enthusiastically premature specimen at the back of the tray).


Over the years I have tried various methods for making sauce, but I find that the best-flavoured and easiest is to throw the tomatoes into a roasting tin along with a couple of chopped onions, a few cloves of garlic, a couple of chopped courgettes and assorted herbs (in this case leaf celery and thyme), add a little olive oil and then to roast the lot for 30 minutes or so.

When everything has softened nicely, it all goes into the food mill with a few sprigs of fresh basil, which gives a slightly chunkier result than the blender and has the added benefit of removing all (or at least most) of the tomato skins.


The end result is the best tasting pasta sauce in the world - even if the colour could be improved somewhat.
I make a batch of this most evenings at the moment. Most of it is destined for the freezer to cheer me up during the winter, but I can feel a pot of my favourite soup coming on


Watch this space!