SFist in the Kitchen: Tomato Taste Test
Tomato crops haven't fared well in California's recent heat wave, which might explain why market stalls aren't overflowing with the iconic summer vegetables. We spotted some recently, and took some home for a tomato tasting in the SFist test kitchen. Honest, we came up with this idea before the New York Times ran an article about a similar tasting .
We used tomatoes from the Grand Lake Farmer's Market and stored them at room temperature overnight to keep their flavor at its peak. We sliced them just before the tasting, since the best flavor compounds in raw tomatoes dissipate about twenty minutes after cutting.
Photo by Melissa Schneider, whose description of the tomato test is much more colorful than ours.
Green Zebra (Happy Boy Farms)
It's hard to miss this small tomato in a crowd. The green and yellow streaks pour down the side like rain. We found it to be mealy and watery, with a very delicate flavor and a mild acidity.
Jubilee (Tip Top Farms)
One of our favorites of the tasting was this solid orange gem. It had a deep, earthy tomato flavor, with hints of cheese on the finish. (Tomatoes, like Parmiggiano-Reggiano, have high amounts of the savory glutamic acid.) We liked the flesh-to-liquid ratio, finding it to be just the right amount.
Odoriko (Tip Top Farms)
This fleshy tomato had a classic look—solid red and perfectly round. But the green notes turned us off. Blindfolded, we might have guessed that we were eating a bell pepper.
Copia (Tip Top Farms)
This is a gorgeous tomato, with streaks of red, yellow, and orange that create a swirl of color on the inside flesh. Another one of our favorites, this tasted like tomato paste and had a meaty finish, again from the glutamic acid.
Genovese
No matter how unusual your tomato looks, it's probably not as weird as this scrunched-up guy with a donut hole in the middle. Its crunchy texture, green apple high notes, and good acidity suggest an unripe fruit, so we'd suggest trying this one a little later in the season.
Dry-Farmed Early Girls
We're a big fan of dry-farmed tomatoes, grown with minimal (or no) irrigation, but this version had a basic tomato flavor and a surprising wateriness that failed to inspire us.