Although tomatoes were brought back to Europe shortly after their discovery in the New World, it took a long time for the plant to be considered edible. Tomatoes are a member of the nightshade family and rumors of tomatoes being poisonous continued in parts of Europe and its colonies until the mid 19th century; it was not until 1839 that the first pasta recipe with tomatoes was documented. Shortly thereafter tomatoes took hold, especially in the south of Italy. It was Italy’s poor that first dared to try the fruit; growing ornamentally all over Italy the poor, starving and desperate to feed their families, started eating them.
Most likely the first variety to reach Europe was yellow in color, since in Spain and Italy they were known as pomes d'oro, meaning yellow apples.
The French referred to the tomato as pommes d'amour, or love apples, as they thought them to have stimulating aphrodisiacal properties.
There are many different recipes for tomato sauce and every Italian family has its favorite. No two tomato sauces are identical. This is reflected in the Sicilian expression: "He is always different, like a sauce."
All in all there are about 5,000 cultivated varieties of tomato in the world.
Superstition once had it that placing ripe tomatoes on a mantel when first entering a new dwelling would guarantee future prosperity or would ward off evil spirits. Certain times of the year tomatoes were hard to come by, and could not be grown, so in replacement, tomato sized balls of red fabric were stuffed with sand or sawdust and used in the place of the real ones, a new invention occurred as a result; these filled balls also doubled as pincushions.
In 1981, the USDA chairman declared ketchup to be a vegetable in order to justify Reagan administration budget cuts in the school lunch program! In 2007 Divine Pasta Company formed Cube Foundation to help, along with Slow Food in Schools, undo these changes.
When buying canned or tinned tomatoes be careful to look at the ingredients. They should contain tomatoes and maybe salt. That’s it. No added water, no emulsifiers, no thickeners, no crap!
San Marzano Tomatoes
You’ve heard this word thrown around, but what does it really mean to be a San Marzano tomato? San Marzano tomatoes, a variety of Roma or plum tomatoes, are considered by many chefs to be the best sauce tomatoes in the world and the best for canning because of their thin skins. They come from a small town of the same name near Naples, Italy, grown in volcanic soil in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. The volcanic soil is believed to act as a filter for water impurities. Compared to the Roma Tomatoes, with which most people are familiar, Marzano tomatoes are thinner and pointier in shape. The flesh is much thicker with fewer seeds, and the taste is much stronger, less sweet and less acidic. Many people describe the taste as bittersweet, like great chocolate. Because of their high quality, San Marzano tomatoes have been designated as the only tomatoes that can be used for Vera Pizza Napoletana (True Neapolitan Pizza). The name denotes both a point of origin and a variety of tomato. True canned Marzanos will have the EU "DOP" emblem on the label.
