ALL ABOUT FOOD: Speaking on ‘love apples’ and heirlooms

Every Sunday Terry tries to listen to “The Splendid Table” on National Public Radio (KPCC-FM 89.3) at 3 p.m., a program for serious foodies. It’s full of wine, food, recipes and tips, and includes the hilarious gourmandizing adventures of Jane and Michael Stern, authors of “Road Food.”

Last week’s special guest was Amy Goldman, author of “The Heirloom Tomato from Garden to Table.” Amy is a seed conservator, an advocate for biodiversity and an avid gardener. But first and foremost, she wants to beguile you with the beauty, taste and history of the plants to which she is so passionately devoted.

Collaborating with Victor Schraeger, a world famous photographer, they have produced a gorgeous book filled with stunning pictures and encyclopedic descriptions of many fascinating varieties of heirloom tomatoes, plus recipes and a list of seed sources for those of you who are inspired to plant your own. This special volume can be found at Laguna Beach Books, 1200 S. Coast Hwy. Call (949) 494-4779 for more information.

Commercially produced tomatoes, as you well know, are often inedible, but a beautiful heirloom tomato from the Laguna Beach Farmers Market can be a gustatory revelation, perhaps a bit pricey but so delicious!

What exactly is an heirloom tomato? What it’s not is an artificially crossed hybrid; what it is tends to be a bit harder to define. It is a self-pollinating cultivated plant whose seeds have been handed down from generation to generation for 50 to 100 years, depending on which expert you ask.

Some prefer to use the date of 1945, which was the beginning of widespread hybridization to produce plants that sacrificed flavor but were high yield and durable enough to be harvested mechanically.

The most important thing about heirlooms is that they breed offspring that are “true,” which means they’re just like their parents.

Hybrids may be sterile or more commonly, do not have any of the desired traits of their parents. They require lots of fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides and water. These are the tomatoes that taste like potatoes that we buy at the supermarket and eat in most restaurants.

The type of heirloom we are most familiar with is the Beefsteak, and the type of Beefsteak that we see most often is the Red Brandywine. In a way, these are the perfect tomatoes, suitable for all uses, high in sugar and acid, with a meaty texture.

In 1887, Johnson and Stokes, seed purveyors in Philadelphia, received a small package of tomato seeds in the mail, which they tested along with 44 other varieties.

To their astonishment, these completely eclipsed in size and beauty all of the rest. They weighed as much as three pounds when ripe, were remarkably solid and as smooth as an apple. They were named Brandywine after that “most beautiful of all streams that flows near our Quaker village,” Brandywine Creek in Chester County, Pa.

?

‘Mortgage lifters’

There is a whole category of Beefsteaks that are called “Mortgage Lifters.” The name comes from a term that farmers use to identify anything, in addition to their main crops, that generates extra income to help pay off their mortgages.

The most famous of these is Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter. Charlie, a radiator repairman in West Virginia, had been gardening since he was a boy. During the Great Depression, when business slumped, he crossed four of his largest varieties of tomatoes.

After six years, he had a stable variety that tasted better and had larger fruit, averaging 2.5 pounds. He sold the plants for the sky-high price of $1 each and managed to pay off the mortgage on his house in only six years.

Another unusual tomato is the Reisetomate, sometimes called the traveler or pocketbook tomato, which is a mutant described by Amy Goldman as looking “hemorrhoidal,” like a bunch of small tomatoes randomly stuck together. The lobes can be easily removed and eaten one piece at a time. The rest can be put in your purse and saved for later.

The ultimate “love apple” is the Nebraska wedding tomato. In that state, these seeds are still given to a bride as part of her trousseau.

There are about a thousand varieties of heirloom tomatoes, but the ones you will see most often are the Red or Pink Brandywines, the Orange Banana, and the Green Zebra.

For other varieties, you will probably have to grow your own. Amy Goldman has a long list of seed purveyors. We have selected three, all of which have online catalogues and two of which are in California: Tomato Fest in Carmel at www.tomatofest.com, Swallowtail Garden Seeds in Santa Rosa at www.swallowtailgarden seeds.com, and one in Colorado that has exclusively organic seeds, called Golden Harvest Organics LLC at www.ghorganics.com.

To preserve tomato seeds for posterity, there is the Seed Savers Exchange seed bank in Iowa as well as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in far northern Norway that has 4.5 million samples (500 seeds each) of all variety of crops.

We have included a recipe for using these beauties.

FATTOUSH RECIPE

Fattoush is a Lebanese salad adapted from Amy Goldman

Serves 8

Garlic oil

1 cup olive oil

1½ tablespoons minced garlic

8 pita breads, split

1 teaspoon salt

?

Vinaigrette

4 cloves garlic mashed with ½ teaspoon salt

¼ cup fresh lemon juice

¼ teaspoon black pepper

¾ cup olive oil

?

Vegetables

3 cups tomatoes, diced

1 cup Persian cucumbers, diced

2 cups Romaine, chopped

2/3 cup torn mint leaves

½ cup flat leaf parsley, chopped

¼ cup thinly sliced red onion

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

?

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350°

2. Make garlic oil by microwaving the oil and garlic for 1 minute.

3. Brush inside of each pita half with garlic oil. Sprinkle with salt.

Cut each into eighths. Bake on sheet pan 10 minutes.

4. Make vinaigrette by combining ingredients except oil, in blender. Then add oil and blend briefly.

5. Combine veggies and toss with ½ the vinaigrette. Add salt and pepper to taste.

6. Combine pita, veggies and more vinaigrette. Toss.

ELLE HARROW and TERRY MARKOWITZ owned A La Carte for 20 years. They can be reached for comments or questions at themarkos755@yahoo.com