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Tomato GlutSeptember 11, 2010 Years ago Marge Piercy wrote "Attack of the Squash People". It's about gardeners blessed or cursed with an overabundancIe of zucchini, and the lengths to which they'll go to dispose of this overabundance. You recognize the scenario, right? Some poems never go out of date. I've never grown zucchini, so my role in the seasonal drama is to devise excuses for why I can't take more than one or two. At some point, the most eloquent and true excuses fail to persuade the desperate gardener, so it's best to duck around corners when you see someone approaching with an armload of summer squash, any variety. "No zukes!" you cry. Way back in June, a neighbor did offer me a zucchini seedling for my little garden. Remembering "Attack of the Squash People," I thanked my neighbor but declined her offer. So my garden isn't overrun with squash. The tomatoes, on the other hand, are going nuts. I hear it's a banner year for tomatoes, especially cherry tomatoes, which is what mine are. They're called "Black Cherry" because that's what they look like. Here's a bowl of my cherries. The writers and editors among you will probably recognize their pedestal as Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition.
They're very pretty. For two or three weeks now I've been picking between eight and a dozen almost every morning. I like tomatoes well enough, but this is more than I can eat. So I've been making regular deliveries to my neighbors (they're a family of four, all of whom like tomatoes, so I don't feel too guilty), taking them to my writers' group, and packing a few whenever I go visiting. Piercy's zucchini growers are reduced to leaving their bounty on strangers' doorsteps, pressing the doorbell, and running away. I'm not that desperate, but the tomatoes keep coming and the first killing frost isn't likely till the end of the month, so this afternoon I went looking for Things to Do with Tomatoes. Some while ago my friend Cris gave me What's a Cook to Do, by one James Peterson. It's a handsome book that tells you how to do stuff that cookbooks tend to assume you already know. Neither my mother nor my grandmother being cooks, I knew diddly about cooking when I left home. My repertoire has increased considerably over the years, but I'm not the type that seeks out new recipes and culinary techniques for the hell of it. "Sundried tomatoes" crossed my path years ago. At first I was puzzled: were these tomatoes that had been made miscellaneous? No, these tomatoes were missing a hyphen. They weren't sundried, they were sun-dried. To this day they're my #1 argument for why the hyphen can't go extinct in U.S. English. I wasn't about to sun-dry my tomatoes, but the thought occurred to me that I could put my oven to work. What's a Cook to Do confirmed this and suggested two or three hours at low heat. I poured a little olive oil into my small skillet, sliced half a dozen cherries in half, arranged them face-up in the pan, and, when the oven reached 250 degrees Fahrenheit, put the pan in it. The experiment was so successful that I ate all the semi-dried cherry tomato halves before the night was over, sans garnish of any kind. I plan to repeat it soon, and maybe try baking the semi-dried cherries in some rice. Rice was one of the few things I did learn from my mother. She cooked it in a saucepan on the stovetop. So do I; it's the only way I know how to cook rice. The other day Cris explained her technique for braising rice and then baking it. What's a Cook to Do has something that sounds similar. I bet it'd be good with semi-dried cherry tomatoes. Hold off, first frost. Keep those tomatoes coming.
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