Re: VINEGAR & TOMATOES

[Guest guest]

Melody -- >Only I hate vinegar < -- try apple cider vinegar if you don't like

'wine' vinegar.  There are basically 3 kinds of 'vinegar' - 'white' -- which is

basically diluted Acetic Acid, Wine Vinegar - red or white, and 'fruit'

vinegars, with apple Cider being the most common.  but READ THE LABEL! - I've

seen Heinz, in America a famous maker of kitchen things - Catchup (Heinz 57)

being one of the more well known products.  I've seen 'apple cider vinegar' made

up of 'Acetic Acid diluted to 5% concentration, apple cider flavoring " -- !!!! -

it's not even REAL -- it's FAKE with flavoring!!!! - and the same may well be

true of your 'vinegar' -- wine or otherwise.  So - just be careful.  A lot of

people find one of the 'live culture' Apple Cider vinegars better tasting than

regular apple cider vinegar. If you study a bit, like about an hour or so,

you'll find out that it's not difficult to make your own 'home made' vinegar -

and you can use bottled

juices to make it -- I'm part way through a batch of 'balsamic' -- now normally

it has to be 15 years old and aged in multiple woods.  That's GREAT - if you

have about $30-$40 for a bottom end 'OK' Balsamic -- so I use that only when I

need a drop or two -- what I've done is to make some VERY nice wine vinegar --

get a bottle (or box) of OK wine -- red or white -- and drop in the 'mother' --

that piece of 'mold' that's in your 'live' apple cider vinegar and let it do

it's work turning the wine into vinegar - just keep it dark - a bottle painted

black will work fine - and cover it with several layers of cheese cloth -- and

as long as it has Alcohol to eat, that 'mold' will keep cranking out vinegar -

from Merlot or Cab  - to a sweet wine like many of your german wines -- so you

can have an oaky tannin like Vinegar or a very light, sweet fruit like Vinegar -

and just keep the cheese cloth on and keep it dark and magic will happen in just

a few weeks

(well, ok months - depends on the size of the mouth of the jar, and temperature

and kind of wine) .  Rather than make barrels of different woods -- think about

$250-$500 for a 20 gallon wooden barrel -- just dump in chips of wood for

smoking in your BBQ - soak it over night in water - then add some apple wood --

strain it out - and add peach -- strain it out and add cherry -- then Birch etc

etc - and with each wood the flavor changes -- just keep the fermentation going

-- so add a bit of alcohol every now and then - and evaporation will take over

and concentrate it so it's actually SWEET and not SOUR like we think of Vinegar.

But this isn't about Vinegar after I'd written you a note about tomatoes I

thought I'd send it to the group and saw this post - and thought, well OK, might

as well kill two birds with one letter not knowing you were Italian I go into a

bit about Roma tomatoes and why they are better tomatoes in the winter than

other tomatoes will EVER be, even in the middle of August!

so here goes the tomato part:

Melody -- you

can tell when a tomato is 'perfect' when it simply 'falls' off the vine into

your hand leaving behind the stem - you should NEVER have to PULL to get the

tomato off the vine - a very gentle 'tug' is all it generally takes. 

They have

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MANY kinds of tomatoes these days, it's hard to give 'rules of

thumb' -- the best tomatoes are called 'heirloom' - a fancy name for tomatoes

that taste like tomatoes. they come in all sizes and colors and shapes -- from

tiny round TRUE 'cherry' to the oblong-ish kind you have that are more akin to

'roma' tomatoes, to the 'pear' shape - all smaller varieties.

   

 

There are two

basic divisions for large tomatoes: 'determinate', where they all come ripe at

the same time -- and these are the ones that they grow commercially -- when a

few plants in an entire field are 'ripe' you can take a machine through the

ENTIRE field at once -- and pick every tomato at the same time.  These

tend to have thicker skins -- often are more 'square' than 'round' so that you

can pack more in a box than you can if round, turn red before they are full of

the sugars that make tomatoes so wonderful tasting, and worst of all, have very

thick skins so that a machine can pick them and not crush or bruise or puncture

the skin.  These kinds of tomatoes can travel very long distances, and

spend time in and out and in and out of refrigerated shipping containers and

not mold up - they can take a coat of vegetable wax like nearly all apples do

(just take an apple or tomato out from under the lights in the produce section

and you'll see an immediate difference in the color and visual texture of the

fruit.  (they put 1 - slight dyes in the vegetable wax to turn an apple

more red or pink or green or blush - or in the case of a tomato- more red - and

then put a light over them that will show off that particular color more -- so

take an apple or tomato  out from under the lights in the display case and

it will change color -- also take a green veggie down to where the red or

orange ones are and you'll see a difference, just as you will if you take come

celery from the green section down to the red-orange section - and you'll see a

difference too -- the lights are 'tuned' to show off a color range better than

'real' light does. 

 

Determinate Tomatoes

are very difficult to tell when they are 'ripe' and 'soft' is not how you can

tell, it helps, but either tugging at some stem left on the tomato and having

the stem come off easily will help -- or pressing on the end and feeling more

of a 'firmness' (the opposite of a melon) will help you determine if a

determinate tomato is 'ripe' or not.

 

the

INDETERMINATE Tomato is the more normally home grown tomato, and has tomatoes

that form and ripen all season long thus the name: indeterminate - the 'growing

season' (from seed to ripe fruit) is not 'fixed' == the fruit keeps ripening as

long as the sun and temperature allow them to.

 

Generally

speaking the 'indeterminate' are the 'heirlooms' -- the ones with the most

flavor - if you have doubt - brush up against a plant and if you get the

immediate odor of a tomato plant, then it's MORE LIKELY to be an 'heirloom' --

meaning only that it has flavor - like the Cherokee, or the famous 'Mortgage

Buster' some of your more 'modern' 'heirlooms' (called 'heritage' in the UK)

are your 'big boy', 'big girl' etc -- the basic feature of your 'heirlooms' is

that they are 'open pollinated' meaning that you can plant them from seed and

that you will get a natural variation in them -- so some 'heirloom' fruit that

is often HUGE will turn out some seeds that produce small fruit, some that is

super sweet, will produce some that is bland, etc - the other type of seed is a

'hybrid' - meaning that you take, say, two different plants of the same kind -

say a red beet and an orange beet, and pollinate them yourself so you get seeds

that produce a plant that has red and orange rings inside -- that's a fairly

common on -- plant those seeds and you'll get some plants that are red, some

that are orange, some with strange patterns in them and some with round rings

--but if you always plant the same two beets next to each other they will

always produce seed that will produce seed that gives you red and orange ringed

beets 99.9% of the time.

 

There are LOTS

of ways to define 'heirloom' - by age, by type of pollination, or even by law -

some states have laws which say that BY LAW nothing produced after 1971 can

ever be 'heirloom' -- 

 

So -- think of

'heirloom' as the kind of tomatoes that were planted before they used machines

to harvest it -- and that includes wheat, oats, barley, etc - you get a

'natural' bell curve in the height -- some will be VERY high and some will be

VERY short -- but if you are using a harvester you want to make sure that the

plants are all about the same height -- so i'd guess that 99.999% of ALL the

wheat (or oats or barley or any grain) is NOT 'heirloom' anymore - it's all

been genetically altered so that it can yield the most seeds per acre -- and

that means that the closer it is to all being the same height, the more money

you'll make off an acre.  And this has probably been going on for

thousands of years - wheat of a certain height is easier to grab and use a

scythe on than wheat that is higher or lower in stature.  and when you

have a wheel turning, you want plants which won't bend under the wheel or allow

the wheel to pass over - you want them all within inches of each other - so you

'design' a plant that will allow your machine to work more efficiently. 

 

So -- those

small tomatoes won't grow any larger -- that's as large as they'll grow -- they

MIGHT get sweeter - but that's only if they can get riper - so only you know

the answer to that because only you know how they felt when you picked them--

did they just 'fall off the vine' like sweet grapes, or did you have to tug

hard at them to get them to come off? 

 

So -

DETERMINATE tomatoes TEND to be less sweet, have thicker skins, and often tend

to not ripen for long periods of time -- you can't even 'force' them to ripen

-- and they'll likely not become any sweeter -- in fact they'll probably become

LESS sweet and flavorful (if that's possible) as sugars convert to starch and

the skins dry out and become even more tough.

 

SOME

DETERMINATE tomatoes are exceptional tasting, while others are not at all --

just as with 'old time roses' -- some are 'determinate' -- think the ones that

bloom only once a year in the spring, and some are INDETERMINATE - meaning that

they bloom all season long (floribundas for example).

 

==========================================

 

Ripening fruit

- the usual gas that is used to 'ripen' fruit is ethylene - this is why a bunch

of very green bananas will ripen much faster if you put them in a brown paper

bag - -the paper bag gives off  ethylene and this will help the bananas

ripen far faster than they would left on the counter -- you will often see only

'ripe' bananas in your higher end supermarkets, and unripe ones in your 'save

more' super markets.  the higher end markets buy bananas that have been

stored in rooms in which ethylene gas has been circulated - so they are 1) more

uniform in color (they may also have been dyed in a water-based vegetable dye)

2) show less 'bruising' - this is because Americans like bananas which are a

nice yellow, while 'natives' prefer them when they are 'sweet' - that is ripe--

and that means that they have some brown and black splotches on them where

they've hit against other fruit or objects between the tree and your table - if

you taste a 'soft' banana you'll see that it is FAR sweeter and softer than the

pure, clean, 'white' that we like in America.  So Bananas have been

genetically changed as well -- the ones we get in America do not look like the

ones you get over-seas.  This is not because they send all the 'good' ones

to the US, it's because they send a particular TYPE to America and keep the

'heirloom' bananas to eat themselves.

 

In lower end

markets they don't buy the more expensive bananas - they buy the older

varieties which have not been gassed -- so you'll often get irregular size, and

they will more often than not have started to ripen faster than the newer

bananas - so they come to you with more bruises - since they softened and

ripened in transit.  They also give off ethylene so entire 'clumps' of

bananas will ripen more-or-less together.  Especially in today's shipping

containers where circulation is cut down so the ethylene concentration can get

higher inside the containers -

 

So - you can

put your unripe, but red, tomatoes into a brown paper bag, and slip in say a

piece of cardboard with them and they'll ripen far faster than in just a plain

brown paper bag.  If you take a banana that is yellow, and JUST STARTING

to ripen - that is, JUST STARTING to get small brown specks (that are not fly

poop) on them -- put one or two into the brown paper bag, and put it in a

darkish place that is 'room' temperature -- leaves like light -- fruit likes

shade to dark (after all, they have the seeds in them, and the seeds like the

dark, so the fruit tries VERY hard to get ready to have all the stuff the seeds

will need when they sprout ready for them! ).  The ethylene given off by

the ripening bananas will speed up the rate at which the tomatoes ripen as well

-- just BARELY and VERY gently squeeze the tomato -- you should feel just a

TINY bit of 'give' to the flesh --- remember you are not touching a rock to see

if it's soft, you are seeing if there is a tiny bit of 'give' to the flesh of

the tomato -- GENTLE is the key here -- everywhere you 'squeeze' you will leave

a bruise, and it is the bruise that will let in oxygen, speed up 'spoilage' and

may often ruin your tomato completely! -- so GENTLY BARELY squeeze the tomato

-- or any other fruit - to see if it's ripe -- if not -- give it a day or two

and try again.

 

IF you have

gotten a newer tomato you may have gotten one that will not ripen - and if you

can't tell within 3-4 days, in a bag with a ripening banana or two -- it won't

get any better than that. 

 

As a general

rule -- Roma Tomatoes - the oblong kind of small tomatoes often called

'Italian' tomatoes are suppose to have thick skins - and during the all too

long 'off season'  are your best bet for 'ripe' tomatoes - they are

SUPPOSE to have thick skins -- and they are also more on the 'acid' side of

flavor than on the 'sweet' side -- their reason for existence is to make tomato

sauce - so you want a tomato that will give you a thick sauce -- and which has

a fair amount of 'meat' to it - when you can tomatoes you are warned about them

because while they are nearly a perfect fruit to can because of the acidic

nature of the tomato -- it was notorious for poisoning people because it would

1) eat through the tin used in the can, and leach out the lead -- so you'd get

a lot of lead,  2) they'd also eat tiny microscopic holes in the can

letting in microbes so you could get poisoning -- from simple '24 hour flu'

(95%+ of which is generally some kind of 'food poisoning')  and 3)

botulism is a type of bacteria that grows with or without oxygen -- some can

come from honey - and it's simply the Bacteria that forms in the honey, and then

produces spores that produce the toxin that paralyzes your nervous system and

you die when you stop breathing - when the spores germinate in a can (say)

without oxygen, then they produce the toxin that kills you exactly like the

ones that come from the bacteria in the honey -- but the acid of the tomatoes

makes it VERY difficult for most bacteria to live -- so tomatoes are both very

popular to can, but also very scary to can.

 

So ANYway --

the Roma tomatoes have a thick skin -- and should- so in the 'off' season look

for naturally occurring 'softness' - which is relative to the others in the bin

-- and you'll see 1) why you squeeze gently -- and 2) what a REAL ripe Roma

feels like - and you can sweeten it up by using some sugar on the tomato if you

wish - this will bring out more of the 'tomato' flavor if you want to use it in

a salad or on a sandwich -- but it will not turn a Roma into a Cherokee - and

cooking it SLOWLY all day in a cast iron pan will 1) oxidize the acid to make

it far sweeter and 2) add iron to your diet from the cast iron cook ware --

(but remember if you use cast iron you'll need a 'flame tamer' -- ( it has lots

of names - but this is what it looks like:

 

http://www.webstaurantstore.com/8-1-4-flame-tamer-simmer-ring/672874.html

 

and don't

expect it to last forever -- those 1) don't exist and 2) the ones which come

close cost $$$$$!!! -- they keep the tomatoes (or other things) from sticking

or burning to the bottom of you pan -- Grandma had a set of heavy iron ones

which I inherited - my grandfather had made them for her mother when he was

courting my grandmother and were simply flat pieces of iron with holes in them

-- think-- thick bottomed cast iron fry pan without the sides and holes drilled

in it -- I have them now-- but before I inherited them, I used 'joining plates'

from rail roads -- they are the iron plates where the two rails are 'tied'

together -- I'll polish one side and since they have a small ridge on the

'bottom' side' I'll put a wire brush to that side, and clean it up really well,

but not 'polish' it with a file and sander -- then oil them -- animal oil works

best for this -- and put a coat on and let it turn black, then some more - etc-

just like you would a good cast iron set - some people use vegetable oil 

and I did for years upon years -- but if you don't use them often - the oil can

turn tacky -- so, I'll use animal fat to put the original seasoning on, then

use a LIGHT coat of oil like I'd use on a GOOD QUALITY firearm - different oil,

like olive or peanut -- but just a TINY bit -- to keep the rust away-- then

heat it up just before I store it to drive off ANY moisture that may be down in

the pours of the iron - or caught under the oil.

 

this will

allow you to both cook tomato sauce ALL day long and as long as the flame is

low it will keep you from burning the tomato to the bottom of your pan -- but

the flat side of the 'tie iron' is perfect for cooking REAL tortillas - water,

corn, lime, salt.  period. That type of 'flame tamer' will also give you a

'mini grill' to cook on -

 

So - hope this

helped you know how to tell and pick ripe tomatoes, know why 'heirloom' are

'sweeter' than your machine harvested tomatoes (and wheat, oats, bananas) and

how to ripen most any fruit - from tomatoes to Avocados - 

 

Apples put out

ethylene gas too - but not as much as bananas, esp when the bananas get the

tiny brown spots on them - and why you want to put them in brown paper bags,

and keep them darkish.

___________________________

Dream Well. Travel Well. May you Walk Your Path in Beauty.

" Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. " Carl Sagan.

________________________________

[Guest guest]

Thank you for your very informative posting.

There isn't any kind of vinegar in my house. Don't like it, HATE balsamic

vinegar (which is big around here with all the italians). And thanks much for

the tomato lesson.

The only reaon I pulled them off the vine is because she invited me to her

backyard and that was my opportunity. I didn't have to pull,I just picked.

Thanks much

You're the tomato guy!!!

lol Melody