Which tomatoes should I grow?

One of my favourite vegetables to grow is the tomato. I love the smell of the plants, the excitement as the first tomatoes start to ripen in high summer, and most of all the great taste - so much better than supermarket tomatoes. Each year I grow a number of varieties. I like to have a good range of colour and sizes, particularly for salads. I also like to grow some tomatoes that are particularly good for cooking. I thought I'd share my views on the varieties I have grown over the last couple of years. I'm always interested to hear from people what varieties they have had success with, so feel free to add your comments.

tomato harvest

Pickled green tomatoes

By early to mid October, as temperatures drop and daylight hours shorten, tomatoes grown outside stop ripening. At this point it is best to pick all the remaining fruit on the plants. There are always a lot of unripe green tomatoes that need using. Last year I wrote about making green tomato chutney, one of the classic ways of using green tomatoes. This year, I thought I would also experiment with pickling green tomatoes whole. Pickles are prominent in Turkish cuisine, and a bowl of mixed pickles, or tursu, often appears in a meze spread. I have a lovely Turkish grocers round the corner, which sells a wide range of Turkish pickles. Earlier this year I bought a jar of pickled green tomatoes. They were delicious, and inspired me to have a go at making my own pickled green tomatoes. Pickled green tomatoes have a fresh clean flavour and crunchy texture, and can be added to a meze spread, but are also delicious with cheese and cured meats.

Green tomato chutney

2014 has been a great year for growing tomatoes. My outdoor-grown tomatoes continued to ripen nicely in the dry sunny weather we experienced throughout September. However, there comes a time every autumn when the longer nights and weakening sunshine mean that the tomatoes stop ripening. In cool wet Septembers that point can come sooner rather than later, especially if the plants contract late-season blight, in which case it is best to cut your losses and pick all the remaining healthy fruit. Last weekend, the last in September, we decided to harvest the remaining tomatoes. I might have been tempted to leave them for another week or so, but we are about to move house, and I thought we should pick them before we left.

Tagliatelle with courgette, tomato and mozzarella

Pasta forms the cornerstone of many week-night suppers in the Turpin household: it is quick to cook - many pasta dishes can be prepared in under 30 minutes, doesn't create much washing up - two pans max, and is super tasty. This is a classic week-night pasta dish for the summer, when both tomatoes and courgettes are in season and can be picked from the garden. Like many pasta dishes, this recipe is pretty simple and relies on using quality ingredients for really good flavours. This recipe will feed two.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes, like their relatives potatoes and aubergines, were brought to Europe by the conquistadors. Apparently the Spanish originally regarded these small round fruits as more decorative than edible. When the Spanish governed the Kingdom of Naples in the sixteenth century, they took tomatoes with them, and it was the (hungry) Neopolitan peasants who first started eating tomatoes, or so the story goes. Today tomatoes are a huge part of Italian culinary culture, and the habit of eating tomatoes has spread throughout Europe.